pediatric
Basic Recommendations for Protecting Against Dental Plaque
Preventing dental plaque is often an achievement that new moms and dads envision for their young children. However, as children grow and come to be more self-sufficient and as other children join the family, standard dental care may become lax and plaque can pile up in little mouths. Here are some tips to make preventing plaque a simple win in your family.
The Way To Prevent Dental Plaque
Tips For Parents Who Have Kids In Braces
Twenty years ago having braces was more embarrassing than anything else for a child. However, today braces are being seen as a fashion statement with people in Asia even buying prosthetic braces kits to apply at home for fashion reasons only. Although Invisalign does offer clear orthodontic care without the will need for wires, most kids are still wearing traditional metal braces.
Baby Juice Bottles
Parents who come into my Portland, Oregon pediatric dental practice often tell me, “My baby loves juice and I just cannot take it away, so I water it down.”
These parents love their babies and want them to have all the good things in life. Juice is sweet and delicious and healthy too. Right?
How Braces Move Teeth
Kids that suck their thumbs often have buck-teeth. Why?
A girl from Gladstone, Oregon asked me why her front teeth stuck out so far. She was a first grader who found it very hard to stop being a thumb sucker.
Teeth are connected to jaw bones by thousands of tiny fibers that surround the roots and permit slight movements of the teeth during chewing and prevent the teeth from being dissolved away by the bone cells called osteoclasts.
Expanding Your Palate
If you are an artist, your palatte may be very messy and colorful. If you are a gourmand, then your palate describes your appreciation of smell and taste. Anatomically, your palate as the roof of your mouth.
Some people have a narrow palate for a variety of reasons:
- thumbsucking
- pacificer use
- low tongue posture
- birth defects like a cleft
- mouth breathing
- unknown reasons
Treating Portland Pulps & Root Canals
“Root canal? Ouch!” That is what most of my Portland patients tell me, but luckily root canal treatments take away toothaches to make you feel better.
Usually dentists prefer to treat infected root canal pulps before they start to hurt because this is the most comfortable way to go. Waiting for a tooth to hurt before starting root canal treatment is usually less comfortable.
Permanent teeth with infected pulps need root canal treatment.
Gum Infections in Portland
A four year old boy from Portland came in with his mother, complaining of swelling around his baby molar.
When I looked at it, I noticed that there was an infection around the last molar, next to where the permanent tooth develops.
Since it could be either an infection of the tooth that spread to the gingiva (gums) or an infection of the gums that could affect the developing teeth, we took an x-ray.
Flossing Braces
Keeping braces clean is so important to moving teeth that it bears repeating. Keeping braces clean is so important to moving teeth.
Why is it important you ask? To completely correct a badly positioned tooth, the tooth must slide the brace along the wire in the brace only a few millimeters.
That is NOT very far! Two years to move something the thickness of a pencil!
Tears & Fears
As a pediatric dentist, I specialize in children and special needs patients. Nevertheless, a large part of my job is overcoming parental fears.
Parents have an incredible influence on their children; both positively and negatively.
Kids are so tuned into parental non-verbal communication that even if a mother does not say anything negative about an upcoming dental visit, their own worries and fears will cause their child to worry too.
When to Start Braces
Many parents comment on the number of kids in second or third grade who have some braces.
Treating with two phases of orthodontic care can usually be avoided. Good evidence exists that most orthodontic treatment is best provided at one time as a pre-teen.
However, there ARE times when early orthodontic treatment is useful.
Orthodontic problems that are best treated early:
- lower front teeth that bite outside of upper teeth (a cross bite)
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