In honor of National Children's Dental Health Month, we wanted to talk about a really important topic to us. We often hear "but they're just baby teeth, do they really need to be fixed? Aren't they going to fall out anyways?" Although it is true that baby teeth do fall out and new adult teeth come in, not treating baby teeth can cause a lot more harm than we think!
What happens when we don't treat cavities in baby teeth?
- Cavities can grow really big and affect the nerve inside the tooth. When this happens, your child may start feeling discomfort and pain on that tooth. This pain affects children when they're eating and sometimes even at night when they're trying to sleep.
- After cavities start affecting the nerve of a tooth, the bacteria from the cavity may start causing an infection to form inside the bone underneath the tooth. You may see a pimple with pus on your child's gums next to the tooth with the cavity.
- If infections are left untreated, this can be really painful and potentially dangerous for your child. Infections can cause large swellings in the face and neck, and if the swellings are large enough, it can cause your child to have difficulty breathing. This becomes a really urgent emergency!
- Over time, if the infections stay in the bone around the tooth, this infection may affect the adult teeth that are developing underneath. The adult teeth may not develop normally - they sometimes become a different shape or a different color from what is normal.
- And lastly, not all baby teeth fall out at once! Most children do not lose their last baby tooth until they are 12 years old!
All of these things that can cause discomfort for your child are extremely preventable! When we treat baby teeth, we try to treat them as early as possible so that we take care of the cavities when they are still small. Our goal is to protect and save as many baby teeth as we can, because we want every child to have a beautiful and healthy smile!
