MYTH 3: CHILDREN DO NOT NEED TO GET THEIR MILK TEETH TREATED

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Good, healthy and well-maintained milk teeth are most essential not only for chewing, appearance and proper development of speech in a child, but also for the eruption of permanent teeth in their proper location. 32 permanent teeth replace 20 milk teeth. The space for the permanent teeth is maintained by the milk teeth. If the milk teeth are lost early due to caries (decay) or any other reason, the space occupied by it will be closed by the forward migration of the tooth behind it and this will result in the permanent teeth erupting in a crooked fashion requiring orthodontic treatment later.

This raises the question: When should a child visit a dentist for the first time? The answer is as soon as the teeth erupt. The child should come into contact with the dentist before there is any toothache so that the first visit becomes a pleasant one and the child gets to know the dentist as a friend.

 The best way to get to the problem as early as possible is by taking your child for a regular dental check up at least once every six months. By doing so, unnecessary pain to the child (and possible loss of tooth) can be avoided. Also, normal fillings are less time consuming and less expensive than root canal treatments or space maintainers.

Decayed milk teeth should be treated as soon as possible by doing a proper restoration with a suitable filling material, so that the tooth remains in its place until the permanent tooth replaces it. A normal filling should be done as soon as the cavity develops, that is, before the tooth becomes painful. Once the tooth becomes painful the tooth will have to be either removed or root canal treatment (RCT) has to be initiated. (This is true for the permanent teeth also). If the tooth cannot be saved, then it has to be extracted and an appliance called a space maintainer has to be provided to preserve the space until the permanent tooth erupts.

But how does one know when the tooth has to be filled? Most often it so happens that the parents are unaware of the fact that the child has cavities in the teeth until the child complains of tooth ache, by which time it is usually too late to save the tooth by a conventional filling.