What Is the Choice of Restoration for a Child with Severely Decayed Teeth?
The ideal restoration for your child’s tooth with severe decay should provide stable function, protection from pollution later, freedom from pain, and improved appearance. Unfortunately, improper repairs often fail and need retreatment resulting in additional expenditure, time, and inconvenience for the entire family. In addition, the infection in the tooth can expand, causing severe pain to your child.
Significant cavities are often associated with broken down teeth with infection to the tooth’s nerve and need strength and protection with a dental crown. As large holes present a higher risk of pain, tooth loss, and severe infection, dental crowns represent savings by encasing tooth surfaces susceptible to future cavities in children at increased risk of tooth decay.
Several studies confirm the ideal restoration of choice for a severely decayed tooth is a stainless steel dental crown because of its durability. These crowns can extend the longevity of the retreatment needing sedation or general anesthesia with its risks and expenses.
Tooth decay is a chronic condition associated with childhood that hurts the child’s health and quality of life. However, tooth decay remains preventable with the help of regular visits to pediatric dentists in Houston for preventive exams and cleanings, besides following excellent oral healthcare at home.
What Severe Decay Means for Your Child’s Tooth?
Tooth decay is not just a mere cavity or a blemish on your child’s tooth. In reality, the infection makes children vulnerable to infections in other body parts like their ears, sinuses, and brain. Furthermore, the discomfort from tooth decay makes chewing painful, too, preventing your child from eating correctly and getting sufficient nourishment. It also hampers children from speaking, sleeping, and going to school to affect their academic performance. In addition, children with untreated tooth decay or more vulnerable to bullying in school than their counterparts without such infections. In extreme cases, the condition and the treatment-associated risks can assume life-threatening proportions resulting in severe disability.
Severe tooth decay comments all the above and more to result in the loss of self-confidence in your child, making them withdrawn and grow up as introverts instead of having a friend circle encouraging positive development to impact their oral and general health.
How do Children Develop Tooth Decay?
Children develop tooth decay similar to adults when the bacteria in their mouths use sugars to produce acids that break down tooth enamel. Children are vulnerable to acquiring more bacteria early in life, resulting in significant tooth decay before three. The tooth cannot heal itself after it is broken and allows the infection to make the tooth sensitive and painful, preventing your child from eating and drinking. It also hampers oral hygiene to create a vicious cycle quickly spiraling into concerning health situations.
Children at risk of tooth decay include those with eating habits, including sugary foods and beverages or refined carbohydrates, poor dental hygiene, insufficient fluoride, special needs, and the lack of visits to dentists for exams and cleanings.
Treatment for Different Stages of Tooth Decay
The earliest stage of tooth decay is reversible before the infection causes permanent damage. Restorative treatments in Houston achieve the goal by providing fluoride treatments to strengthen tooth enamel, making it resistant to acid-producing bacteria.
When tooth decay damages the enamel, the infection also causes holes making fillings essential to treat cavities. When providing fillings, restorative dentists use tools to clean the pollution before filling the hollow space with silver amalgam of composite resin fillings with a tooth-colored appearance. The material appears like the affected tooth to protect the aesthetic appearance of your child.
If your child has dentin decay softer than the enamel, the infection moves faster, making a dental crown necessary unless it is identified and treated early with dental fillings.
Unfortunately, if tooth decay reaches the dental pulp, your child will need a root canal to remove the dental pulp and eradicate the infection from the tooth to restore it with a crown.
If an abscess is visible near your child’s tooth roots, the pediatric dentists in Houston will suggest performing a root canal to eliminate the infection and seal the tooth. In severe cases, your child’s tooth may need extraction and restoration with space maintainers.
Tooth decay is preventable by maintaining appropriate dental hygiene, getting exams and cleanings at half-year intervals, and avoiding foods and beverages that encourage bacteria to produce acids. However, if your child’s tooth is affected, the best option is to get them to receive treatment early to avoid the risk of intensive therapies that might even require tooth removal.
If you want to prevent tooth decay in your child as a precautionary measure consulting Greenway Pediatric Dentistry helps you plan your child’s dental health and get treatments for them in the earliest stages of this infection. Consult them today with your child to have a customized treatment plan for them and prevent tooth decay from affecting them.