Common Dental Emergencies Faced by Kids and Families

There are a variety of common disasters and small emergencies that pediatric dentists face on a daily basis and obviously parents worry each time a dental emergency strikes. It’s understandable, because if left untreated any of these common occurrences could become serious. At the same time, though, it’s worthwhile to remember that most kids’ dental offices have seen it before, so as long as you seek medical attention promptly, it should not be difficult to get all the help you need.

Toothaches

This one is the most common for both kids and adults. Toothaches tend to have a variety of causes, but the first aid is simple:

1. Clean the area with warm water
2. Inspect for impacted food and other debris and clear it
3. Compress the aching tooth with cold and call the dentist

Your dentist will be able to tell you whether the symptoms are serious enough to need attention, and if they do, the dentist will want to schedule an appointment to address the challenge ASAP.

Dental Avulsion

This is just a fancy term for knocking a tooth out, and pediatric dentists see plenty of it. If it’s possible to grab the tooth on your way in, do so. Pack it in ice, and follow first aid procedures to stop the flow of blood. Then, you will want to consult with your dentist. If the injury is small and the tooth is a baby tooth, an effort to replace the tooth may not be necessar. If it is an adult tooth, you might need a couple of appointments to discuss implants.

Displacement

Tooth displacement happens when new adult teeth growing in begin to push baby teeth or more established teeth out of place, causing alignment issues. It can happen slowly, from growth, or it can happen quickly due to truama.

A Broken Tooth

A crown fracture happens when your child is grinding his or her teeth or an impact createsa crack in the visible part of the tooth. That crack can eventually lead to tooth decay or even the need for a root canal if it is left untreated.

What to do About Dental Emergencies in Kids

A pediatric dentist in Newtown-Langhorne recommends that you call your local dentist for advice whenever you are worried about a dental emergency in kids. That way, you can get timely and relevant advice, including advice about emergency procedures that you might need to apply immediately to help start the healing process in the event of dental trauma. That’s why you need to keep the phone number for your kids dental offices on hand in case of an emergency. Kids have been having accidents that cause dental trauma since the dawn of time and most pediatric dental offices in lower Bucks County have seen it all.

When to Stop Using a Pacifier to Soothe Your Baby

When a baby starts crying, one of the first things many parents do is offer a pacifier. As the child ages, it’s natural for parents to wonder how long they should keep using the pacifier, no matter how effective it might be at calming a fussy baby. For all its benefits, parents and those working in child care services should be aware of the negative effects of pacifiers as well as when a pacifier should no longer be used.

No Hard and Fast Rules

While some experts are under the belief that pacifiers become more of a habit and less of a useful implement after six months, most say that a child should no longer use a pacifier after turning two. There’s also the debate between baby pacifiers vs thumb sucking. Thumb sucking can be just as harmful as a pacifier for a child’s developing mouth. What type of harm you ask?

The Dangers of Pacifiers

One of the biggest issues surrounding prolonged use of pacifiers is that they can lead to ear infections. This is because after a while of sucking on a pacifier, your child’s auditory tubes can open up more than normal. When this happens, throat secretions work their way into the middle ear where they can cause infections. There’s also evidence that suggests that pacifiers and thumb-sucking can damage the alignment of baby teeth, but that same evidence indicates that the damage isn’t permanent.

Weaning a Child Off Pacifiers and Thumb-Sucking

As children age, many suck their thumb or pacifier as a way to relieve the stress of starting school or being stuck in a car for a long period of time. While these methods of stress relief are no reason for you to be alarmed, you should take steps to wean your child off of both the pacifier and their thumb. Specifically, it’s best to start helping a child stop using a pacifier or sucking her or his thumb well before the age of three. Without taking preventative steps, it’s possible that the child’s upper row of teeth will start to tilt forward and lead to dental problems in the future.

Besides the baby pacifiers vs thumb sucking issues mentioned above, there’s a chance a child might develop speech problems due to prolong use of a pacifier. Pacifiers and thumbs can make it troublesome for a child to practice speaking. There are some great articles online to suggest ways to stop thumb sucking in toddlers and we encourage our readers to read these 9 tips on WebMD.com

It can be difficult to break your child of his or her pacifier habit. This post highlights some of the dental problems caused by pacifiers such as a posterior crossbite or an open bite.

What Are Those White Spots on My Baby’s Teeth?

As a parent, you want your children to be healthy, and that includes their teeth. Baby teeth may be replaced in a few short years by the permanent set, but they still require care to prevent decay and other more significant issues. Any untreated dental problems may affect their adult teeth if left untreated.

Perhaps you have noticed white spots on your child’s teeth and have wondered what causes them. In most cases those white spots are no cause for alarm, but they should be evaluated by a dentist to determine if treatment is needed. There are two main causes for white spots on baby teeth, overexposure to fluoride and tooth decay. Luckily, both of these conditions can be diagnosed and addressed to protect your young child’s dental health.

The Good News

Fluoride is one of the best ways to protect young teeth from cavities caused by the buildup of plaque, which is why it is added to water supplies in most areas. If your child drinks a lot of water, be happy that floride is being delivered via the water supply. White spots may develop on his or her teeth due to too much fluoride, a condition known as fluorosis. While it may be concerning, you should not worry too much. There is little risk that these white spots will affect the development of adult teeth; in fact, the exposure to fluoride may strengthen the enamel of adult teeth as well while they begin to form under the baby teeth. Check with your dentist to see if fluorosis has caused these white spots to appear. You may also want to make sure your child is not using too much toothpaste when brushing to limit the fluoride intake.

And the Not So Good News

The other main cause of white spots on your baby’s teeth is decay. Tooth decay can result from not enough brushing and flossing to remove bits of food. When bacteria has the opportunity to take hold, you may notice white spots near the gum line and other signs of tooth decay in toddlers, such as puffy gums and bad breath. A trip to the dentist for a cleaning and checkup, followed by a fluoride treatment, can take care of your child’s baby teeth to keep them healthy and prevent cavities or deeper infections.

Teach your child proper dental hygiene now to take care of teeth for a lifetime. Colgate Oral Care Centerhas lots of good tips to help you instill healthy habits at any age as well as more information on white spots on baby teeth and other dental concerns. This is just one of the signs of tooth decay in toddlersthat you should keep an eye out for. Even the best pediatric dentist in Langhorne can’t force you to teach good dental hygiene at home. This often comes from patient persistence between the caregiver and the child.

Water Flossing for Kids Fights Bad Breath

We try to drill the message of important dental hygiene into our kids’ heads every day, yet statistics seem to show that those efforts are largely unsuccessful. So much so, in fact, that the American Association of Pediatric Dentists reports that 42 percent of U.S. parents recognize that their children’s dental hygiene standards are not up to par. Yet if you feel you’re losing the battle of getting your kids to understand the importance of dental health, don’t be discouraged. There are several tools and techniques out there that can help make the process of brushing (and more importantly, flossing) easier and even fun for kids.

Helping Kids to Develop a Good Dental Perspective

The trouble in getting your kids to see why they need to take care of their teeth and gums is often due to the fact that the message of having a healthy smile as an adult typically falls on deaf ears. Most children have trouble picturing themselves in a week, much less 10-15 years in the future. Thus, you need to try and show what the benefits of good dental hygiene are in the here-and-now.

What about avoiding bad breath? Given their many daily interactions with their peers, no kid wants to be singled out as the one with bad breath. The trouble is that brushing alone often isn’t enough to completely prevent it. Much of the plaque and tartar buildup that contributes to halitosis falls into the spaces between teeth, which is almost impossible to reach with a toothbrush. Therefore, if your kids are to avoid bad breath, flossing needs to be part of their daily routine.

Water Flossing is the Way to Go

Enter the concept of water flossing. Rather than trying to prefect the process of traditional flossing, kids can use an easy-to-operate device which uses a pulsating watering action that serves to first decompress and then compress the areas between the teeth, allowing for the simple removal of all harmful particulates. Best of all, kids find the gentle sensation produced by a water flosser feels cool and even ticklish, which helps to turn the task of flossing into a fun activity.

While your children will enjoy the fact that water flossing helps them to avoid bad breath, you’ll rest easy knowing that it also helps prevent oral ailments such as:

• Gingivitis
• Gum recession
• Tooth decay

It’s Never Too Early to Introduce Good Habits

When is it too soon to start introducing your kids to flossing? The truth, if they’re ready to brush, they’re also ready to floss. Starting early will help make maintaining good dental hygiene for toddlers a veritable breeze.

Your kids want to enjoy a happy, healthy smile and the pediatric dentist in Levittown PA we spoke with agrees; they just don’t yet appreciate the work that goes into maintaining one. By incorporating techniques such as water flossing into their dental hygiene regimens, and getting your childrens dentist to make flossing fun during the initial instruction, you can help them to develop healthy patterns that they’re more likely to adhere to as they get older.

Preventing Expensive Dental Work Requires Regular Visits as a Child

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, dental caries affect upwards of 25 percent of children between the ages of 2 and 5 in the United States. By the time children reach the ages of 12, half of them are estimated to have serious tooth decay. The state of a person’s teeth when they are young is a fairly reliable predictor of what their teeth will be like when they are older.

If preventative steps are not taken throughout a child’s life to temper cavity development and keep teeth healthy, expensive dental work will almost certainly be required at some point in the future. For this reason, it is important for parents to dedicate themselves to finding the best kid’s dentist near them and start taking their children in for regular visits once they reach the age of four or five years old. Worried about the costs associated with regular dental visits? Regularly taking your kids to an affordable kid’s dentist is actually less expensive than trying to treat years of dental neglect later on.

What You Can Do to Prevent Childhood Tooth Decay

Prevention is the most effective way to keep cavities at bay and prevent them from developing into more serious dental issues.  When children are brought to a dentist for regular checkups, they are less likely to require extensive (and expensive) dental work. This is because it takes time for dental conditions and diseases to develop, and if they are detected early on they can normally be treated with minimal cost and invasiveness. Here are a few things you can do to promote dental health in your child:

• Religiously schedule 6-month checkups from the age of 4 and upwards.
• Avoid feeding your child excessive sugar, which has been linked with tooth decay.
• Teach good dental habits like brushing twice each day.
• Understand that dental decay is more about dental care than it is about genetics.
• Feed your child a healthy, balanced diet that will facilitate proper dental development.

If childhood dental diseases are left undetected and untreated, they can develop into more serious conditions that require more aggressive treatments. Allowing a cavity or other dental issue to progress unchecked will not only cause your child unnecessary pain, but can also negatively affect his or her dental and overall health. Find yourself a great pediatric dentist in Levittown or your home town that connects well with your child.

Above all, it is important to realize that proper dental care for your child is well worth the cost. Regular dental checkups will not only help keep your child free from dental pain, but will also help you avoid expensive dental repairs and treatments down the road.