Primary teeth are baby teeth that do not last long. But dentists in Rockport say that despite the short life span, primary teeth play a very important role. The most important function of primary teeth is paving the way for the growth of a child’s permanent teeth.
Why not just remove the infected primary tooth?
The first question now that might arise in your mind is ‘Why don’t just remove the primary tooth’?
If the baby teeth are anyway going to fall out eventually, there’s no reason to save them when they get infected or are damaged due to an injury – that’s the most common assumption. Why should you perform a procedure on the baby teeth that are eventually going to fall out?
Well, let us bust the bubbles of assumptions and make things clear.
Primary teeth play a very important role which goes beyond just waiting for its permanent replacements to erupt. Apart from helping the child to eat and speak properly, baby teeth are responsible for preserving proper space in the mouth for permanent replacements.
If one or more baby teeth are removed from the mouth before the permanent teeth are ready to grow, the child may develop alignment issues with his/her teeth when the permanent counterparts grow in.
According to pediatric dentists in Rockport TX, premature loss of baby tooth/teeth can cause problems like:
difficulty in chewing
Proper speech development issues
Causing crooked, crowded, or misaligned teeth due to adjoining teeth moving into the space created by missing teeth
There are some instances when extracting a baby tooth is considered appropriate. The decision depends on various factors like whether the permanent tooth is ready to grow in and replace the damaged primary tooth and how deep has the infection developed.
How to save the primary tooth?
Now, it has become clear that if a primary tooth is in danger of loss due to infection, injury, or decay, then we need to do our best to save it.
The saving process gets quite tricky if the infected or the damaged part of the tooth is the inner pulp. If it was in an adult, the best way to go would be a root canal treatment which involves clearing out the diseased pulp and then fill the space with a filling.
But this is not advisable for baby tooth or young permanent tooth as the pulp plays a significant role in the child’s tooth. The nerves of the pulp and other tissues are responsible for stimulating detain growth in a child. A full root canal treatment could potentially disrupt the growth and make the tooth weak in the long run.
In children, we need to be very careful while saving a primary tooth or a young permanent tooth.
If the pulp is just slightly exposed or not at all exposed
If the pulp of the primary tooth is just slightly or not at all exposed to infection/damage, we would then simply remove the decayed tooth part outside the pulp and then apply dentin growth stimulators or antibacterial agents.
If a part of pulp is affected
If a part of the pulp is exposed to infection, then we would remove only the affected pulp as necessary to eliminate the infection through a procedure called Pulpotomy. This procedure is used if the remaining pulp is healthy or is restorable to health.
If the whole inner pulp is affected or not restorable
In this case, we need to perform Pulpectomy which involves the removal of the entire pulp. It is referred to as a baby root canal which is the last resort to save the tooth. With this procedure, the dentin growth could be stunted and the tooth will not develop as healthy as it should.
The best approach to avoid these procedures and save your tooth is the prevention of course. Make sure your child practice effective oral hygiene habits and keep up with regular dental visits.