3 Seemingly Minor Childhood Dental Problems That You Shouldn’t Ignore

Oral healthcare is an important part of your child's life. You likely helped your child learn to brush and floss and restrict candy and sugary drinks to keep the cavities at bay. But some dental problems that occur when your child still has baby teeth that might not seem important to fix right away. However, ignoring these problems can sometimes lead to other oral health problems or damage to the awaiting permanent teeth.

Here are a few of the seemingly minor childhood dental problems that you shouldn't ignore.

Painless Cavity

Cavities are often a part of a child's dental life even with the best laid dietary plans. Cavities that are causing pain will likely inspire a quick dental visit for a cleaning and a filling. But cavities that seem smaller or aren't causing any pain might seem less urgent especially if your child is due to lose that tooth soon.

Cavities can be severe without looking so on the surface and without causing pain. The cavity can be causing internal damage to the root canal, which can then spread infection down into the gums. The infection can cause the soft tissue and bone to deteriorate slowly. The damage can also spread down into an adult tooth, waiting under the baby tooth to erupt, and cause damage before that tooth is even out.

Take your child to your pediatric dentist for regular appointments and have any cavities, big or small, treated as soon as they are spotted.

Dental Crowding

Dental crowding occurs when a tooth or teeth shift out of place and cause teeth to start to overlap each other. Minor dental crowding might not seem significant since, again, these are teeth your child will lose anyway. But the baby teeth are in fact placeholders for the adult teeth and early, untreated crowding can lead to the permanent teeth erupting into the same positions.

Orthodontic treatment can help fix your child's crowding if the majority of baby teeth are still in the mouth. A temporary implant is used in the empty spaces to keep the teeth from overly shifting into the open areas during treatment.

If the majority of baby teeth are already gone, your dentist might decide to wait until the adult teeth to emerge before fixing the crowding issue.

Early Loss of Tooth

Early loss of a tooth due to trauma or decay can also lead to the adult teeth coming in out of position. When a child looses a tooth during sports, dentists recommend finding and saving the tooth then making an emergency dental appointment. The tooth can often be put back into the socket with a splint and can then heal back into place. The tooth only needs to heal enough to stay in place until the adult tooth emerges.

For more information, contact A Wild Smile or a similar location.


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