Treatment of Baby Tooth Decay
How is baby tooth decay treated?Tooth decay begins in the outer layer known as enamel and advances inward toward the deeper dentin layer. While filling treatment may be sufficient for decay that is detected early on, more severe cases can go as far as requiring amputation (the removal a section of the tooth’s pulpa).
- When decay reaches the pulpa, the deepest layer of the tooth next to the nerve, your child will begin feeling pain at night. This will prevent your child from getting an uninterrupted sleep and will cause irregularities in his or her eating habits.
- Baby teeth serve a very important function. Namely, they ensure nutrition as well as phonation, the ability to correctly voice various sounds. In the early stages of decay, the child only feels pain after eating. In the more advanced stages, pain will be constant and the child will not want to eat food. In the end, this can lead to malnutrition and stunted growth.
- The spread of decay happens as the amount of bacteria in the mouth increases and the decaying tooth begins to affect the surrounding healthy teeth.
- Some families believe there is no need to seek care for baby teeth, as the permanent teeth are due to erupt from below anyhow. On the contrary, premature extraction or loss of baby teeth for any reason causes the neighboring teeth to shift into the gap left by the missing tooth. This leads to crowding, problems chewing and speaking, and aesthetic issues. During the speech acquisition period, especially, the absence of the front teeth can lead to erroneous phonation of the sounds “f”,”v”,”s”,”z”and “t”, which can be permanent. Aesthetics is one of the other major issues and is just as just as important for children as it is for parents. Children who have had teeth extracted due to decay or other reasons have collapsed cheeks, which give them an aged appearance. Children who think they have unattractive teeth often open their mouths as little as possible while smiling or speaking. This can create self-confidence problems and other psychological issues.
