Kids Root Canal Treatment
Root Canal Therapy for Kids
The retention of baby teeth is so important to the development of your child’s growing mouth and the way his or her adult teeth will come in. For baby teeth with extensive decay or infection, this can sometimes include root canal therapy.
Young children can lose primary (baby) teeth and even immature permanent teeth when the pulp, the living tissue inside a tooth, becomes infected. This is often the result of trauma or dental caries (tooth decay) and creates a special problem for the child. The primary teeth provide important guides for the newly developing permanent teeth that will replace them. And injury resulting in loss of young permanent teeth can be even more troublesome, because neither tooth development, nor jaw growth is complete. If teeth are lost prematurely, a malocclusion (“mal” – bad; “occlusion” – bite) can easily result.
Why Root Canals Are Performed?
If your child’s tooth has been chipped or cracked, or if he or she is experiencing sensitivity and pain in a tooth, we may need to utilize root canal therapy. This is because these symptoms can be signs of extensive tooth decay or a dental cavity that has gone untreated longs enough that it’s reached the tooth’s pulp.
Root Canal Treatment is indicated to relieve pain in a tooth which occurs when the cavity extend deep into the tooth and involves the nerve portion of the tooth and also done when due to trauma the tooth fractures exposing the nerve portion. In certain situations there might be no pain but the tooth shows infection in an x-ray. Root canal treatment is also indicated in such cases to resolve the infection and save the tooth. A swelling beneath the tooth is also an indication that the tooth needs root canal treatment.
How a Paediatric Root Canal Is Different?
A paediatric root canal will be done more quickly and pain-free than adult root canals. This is because, unlike adult root canals, a root canal performed on your child only removed the surface nerve structure.
Truths & Myths about Root Canal Treatment for Kids
Most of us have heard adults going in for Root canal treatment as a remedy for tooth pain. However when it comes to performing the same treatments for kids, most of the parents opt for tooth extraction rather than root canal treatment to save the tooth.
The explanation given for the same is that since the milk teeth have to be ultimately replaced by the permanent ones; why spend on them?
Deciduous teeth also help to guide the eruption of the permanent teeth. Early loss of a deciduous tooth leads to loss of such guidance phenomenon leading to eruption of permanent tooth in abnormal place. The problem is further compounded in cases where multiple teeth are involved.
