Baby Teeth: Fix or Not?

Baby teeth are very important in your child’s health and development.  They are essential in chewing, speaking and smiling.  They also hold the space for the permanent tooth to come in.  Think of the baby tooth as a puppet string, guiding each adult tooth. 

“My child’s baby tooth has a cavity.  I think I should just leave the cavity alone. Why fill it if he’s just going to lose it?’

A cavity is a hole in a tooth that grows larger over time.  By not fixing your child’s cavity, it will continue to spread throughout the tooth and neighboring teeth.  Once that cavity reaches the center of the tooth, where the nerve is, is when your child will have a toothache.  By then he will need a root canal to repair the tooth.  That cavity has now caused an abscess or infection.  This infection doesn’t know to stop at the baby tooth and continues spreading to the adult tooth forming underneath the gum tissue.  This can result in a malformed permanent tooth.  Baby teeth remain in the mouth until your child is 12 years old.  That tooth, with the cavity, may be in your child’s mouth for years.  It can take weeks to months for a cavity to become an abscess.  This not only will leave your child with a traumatic dental experience, but a painful tooth ache.  Ouch!

“Yikes.  Let’s just pull my child’s decayed tooth then.”

Using x-rays we can determine approximately how long that tooth will be in your child’s mouth.  If the adult tooth is coming in shortly, by all means removing that decayed baby tooth is the best treatment.   More often than not, this is not the case.  If that adult tooth is months to years from coming in, and the baby tooth is extracted, the teeth on either side of that space will move and shift.  Often that moving and shifting will alter the way that adult tooth will come in.  The space reserved for that adult tooth is now compromised and that tooth will now come in crooked, twisted or out of alignment.  This creates a domino effect for other adult teeth to come.  Now they will have to shift and move to come into the mouth.  To correct this crowding, braces will be needed.  Keeping your teeth, whether baby or adult, is always the cheapest and the best option.

 Baby teeth should not be seen as ‘throw away teeth’.  They lay the ground work for adult teeth.  If baby teeth have cavities, adult teeth will come into the mouth in an environment swimming in cavity bacteria. If baby teeth are healthy, adult teeth will have a better chance at remaining healthy throughout adulthood.