Importance of Dental Fillings for Children’s Teeth

Many times people show up in dental offices due to dental cavities. While you may be taking care of your teeth through regular tooth brushing, some other dental practices need to be done in a dental facility. These include dental cleanings, fluoride treatments, and regular dental exams. It is no surprise that people get dental cavities when they do not visit dental offices regularly. For children, the stakes are higher because kids are not particularly keen about what they eat or how they keep their mouths clean. Thankfully, procedures like dental fillings offer second chances to patients that need them.

What Are Dental Fillings?

They are oral materials applied to teeth to fill and seal them as a measure to repair and restore teeth. Dental Fillings in Conway, SC, are used for diseased and damaged teeth. Ideally, without dental fillings, the target teeth would not survive for a long time like the rest of the teeth. As such, it is safe to say that tooth fillings are used to help save natural teeth.

Dental fillings come in different forms, based on the material used to make them. For many dental procedures, the common type of tooth filling used is called silver fillings or amalgams. These fillings feature a metal alloy, with silver as the primary component. However, other types of materials can be used, including gold, ceramic, composite resin, to mention a few. These materials are common for treating adult teeth.

When it comes to dental fillings for children, dentists lean more toward preventive measures. It is why one common type of tooth filling for kids’ dentistry is dental sealants. They are a special type of tooth filling featuring a thin plastic coating used before dental cavities develop on children’s teeth.

Do Children Need Dental Fillings?

If pediatric dentists in Conway, SC, offer tooth repair through dental fillings, then it goes to say that children stand to benefit from them. Tooth filling may be popular among adults, but they also have incredible benefits for children. They include the following:

1. As a preventive measure to fight dental cavities – as you will learn from kids’ dentists near you, children are very prone to dental cavities, mostly between the ages of 6 and 14 years. Unless you make proactive efforts to help maintain good oral health for your child, chances are high that your child will have tooth cavities. A type of filling used in preventive dentistry to prevent dental cavities is called a dental sealant. Sealants are popular in pediatric dentistry since children need the most proactivity, more so when it comes to fighting dental cavities.
2. Alleviating pain – one of the reasons why you need a Conway pediatric dentist to treat your child has to do with pain. Many of the children that need dental care following tooth decay need it because of increased pain levels. Infection in a tooth damages the nerve endings thereof. This damage is what leads to increased pain levels, which seem to worsen as the days go. Therefore, having a pediatric dentist near you treat your child’s tooth is a measure you take for treating pain.
3. Preventing future tooth decay – according to Dr. Shalini Sanku, repairing diseased teeth is a measure to prevent future tooth decay. The function of a tooth filling is to fill and seal a tooth, which had formerly been exposed, due to an infection or injury. Therefore, once the hole is sealed, a tooth filling acts as a barrier to prevent re-infection in the treated tooth.
4. Preserving natural teeth – it is too early for your child or teenager to lose their permanent teeth. If adults in their prime ages still find it traumatizing to lose natural teeth, wouldn’t the case be worse for children? In that case, when your child has a diseased tooth, opting for tooth filling early enough is a measure to save their natural teeth. Otherwise, the infection may require a pediatric dentist near you to extract the tooth to save your child’s oral health. Besides, a tooth filling does not only preserve the diseased tooth. By treating the infection thereof, dental filling procedures also help protect the other healthy teeth from the risk of infection.