Caries is also known as tooth decay. It is the most prominent problem in children’s oral health at present. Today we will discuss the causes, clinical manifestations, preventive measures and treatment around caries. In addition, if a child has tooth decay and needs treatment we would like to give some advice to parents about the treatment.
How does caries arise? Let’s look at this picture. This is the bacteria that grows in the mouth, which uses the sugar in the food and metabolizes it to produce acid, which causes the pH value in the mouth to drop, leading to the dissolution of inorganic material in the teeth, which further leads to demineralization of the teeth. If this phenomenon continues without intervention, the organic material in the teeth will not have enough inorganic material to support, and the teeth will disintegrate and form cavities.
To sum up, the occurrence of caries is related to the caries-causing bacteria in the oral cavity, sugary diet, caries-prone teeth or oral environment, which will lead to the occurrence of caries under the action of certain time.
About the prevention of oral caries, we need to focus on the above four aspects. First of all, pay attention to clean the plaque in the mouth, control the child’s diet, avoid consuming too much sugary food, form good diet and brushing habit, and check the oral hygiene regularly.
Cleaning the mouth and flossing are all about plaque control. And a balanced diet and controlling the intake of snacks tells us to create and cultivate a good feeding and eating habit for our children.
Before teething, parents are advised to wipe the oral mucosa of their children with medical gauze wrapped around their hands. This will ease the discomfort of teething while the child is teething, plus it will allow the child to adapt to the oral environment early. Make your child feel that brushing is as important and necessary as washing and bathing.
Brushing – For children under 2 or 3 years of age, you can help your child brush their teeth by wrapping medical gauze around their fingertips or using a fingertip toothbrush with the help of a guardian. To increase your child’s self-motivation to brush, you can also use swallowable toothpaste and your child’s favorite flavor of toothpaste to brush.
For children over the age of three, we can choose a health toothbrush with a small head and soft bristles. Since children over the age of three do not swallow toothpaste easily, we can choose fluoride toothpaste for them.
We strongly agree that children should be independent in brushing their own teeth. However, for children under six years old, they may not brush their teeth very well, so they need to be cleaned again by their parents. At least, we should supervise the child to make sure that he or she brushes for three minutes and that every tooth is clean. Or find out together with your child which teeth are not brushed and how to get them clean. Focus on the effect of brushing, not just on whether the teeth are brushed.
Flossing – For 4 or 5 years old children, the decay is very likely to occur on the adjacent surface, and it is relatively hidden and hard for parents to find, only the doctor can see it easily. The decay on the adjacent surface is due to the fact that it is difficult to brush the adjacent surface and the plaque tends to accumulate there. Therefore, we need children to learn to use dental floss by themselves or parents stand behind children to help children to clean the adjacent surface.
All of the above are foods that are easy to cause cavities, not only eating sugar is easy to decay teeth. We suggest children to eat more fruits and coarse fiber foods.
For the frequency of eating, the mouth is in acidic environment after eating, and it takes about half an hour for the mouth to be in neutral environment. If you keep on eating, your mouth will be in acidic environment all the time, which will surely damage your teeth a lot.
There is also the fact that children like to sleep after drinking milk and drinks, which will leave milk and sugary ingredients on the teeth, which will easily produce acid and corrode the teeth, making them look completely different.
We recommend your child to go to the doctor as soon as the first tooth comes in, so that the doctor can assess the child’s risk of caries and get proper guidance on oral hygiene and eating habits from the doctor. It is not a good habit to go to the doctor only when the tooth hurts or has a cavity, but a good habit to go for regular dental check-ups every three to six months. Let the doctor take a look at your child’s oral hygiene maintenance and play a supervisory role. In addition, early detection of some hidden decay and some misshapen jaws can be done. It can also let the child establish a good communication with the doctor, which can help the oral maintenance.
Let’s understand some clinical manifestations and treatment principles of dental caries. Tooth decay is different from our cold and fever, the cold is self-limiting and will get better slowly. But our tooth decay is different, if you don’t take care of it, it will continue to deteriorate. It will affect the development of permanent tooth embryo or lead to the non-development of permanent tooth embryo, and the consequences are very serious.
In this picture, it is the early stage of decay, the tooth demineralization forms the white evil spot, usually the child does not feel anything at this stage. But this stage reminds us that the early warning mechanism of bad teeth is activated, and we should strengthen the oral hygiene and apply fluoride to prevent the teeth from progressing further. If a light yellow or brownish yellow cavity has been formed, we have to do the cavity filling. If it continues to develop, it will develop to deep caries cavity, it will be hot and cold stimulation pain, plugging pain, and biting pain when gingival papillitis occurs. If we let it develop, it may develop to the pulp, and then the child will have more serious spontaneous pain, pain in sleeping at night, abscess on the gums, and the most serious face will be swollen. At this point, the child will be in more pain and will need to be anesthetized for root canal treatment of the nerve. It takes several times to complete this treatment, which increases the cost in terms of time, financial cost and psychological cost for the child. If the tooth continues to develop, it will become a root stump as shown in the picture. It is easy to see that such a tooth can only be extracted, and it is difficult for the child to chew in such an oral environment, which affects eating. The inflammation develops further outward to form a skin fistula, which is that chronic lesion that does not heal, and the bacteria go in by the facial skin to form bacteremia, bacterial myocarditis, nephritis and a series of other systemic diseases. I believe that parents will no longer think that tooth decay is going to be replaced anyway after seeing the above pictures, so there is no need to treat it, right? We emphasize that milk teeth should not only be treated but also need to be treated early, otherwise it will affect children’s appearance, chewing, pronunciation, and even psychological and physical reactions.
Clinically, for children over three years old with good communication skills, doctors will adopt different psychological induction methods to obtain the child’s cooperation with the treatment. For younger children who cannot cooperate with treatment there may be treatment under restraint and treatment under general anesthesia available for parents to choose from.
Do not use visits to the dentist to intimidate the child during the day, such as not brushing the teeth and saying you will take him to the dentist for fillings and extractions. Don’t make him hostile with the dentist. It is true that dental visits are uncomfortable, but adults should not comment in front of the child how disgusting and painful the visit is, how uncomfortable the anesthetic is, or give the child some negative information about the visit. To encourage the child, after the teeth become beautiful, you can eat a lot of delicious food, children will like him more. You can also show your child some picture books and play dental games with him to let him understand the process of dental treatment, so that he will not be so scared. In addition, parents should not be anxious about dental care.