Kids, Cavities, and Fillings

Kids have a habit of running up doctor’s bills quicker than you thought possible. One trip to the dentist’s office is often evidence enough of that. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed as if what you’re doing isn’t making a difference in your kids’ oral health.

When it comes to filling cavities, it’s especially easy to not worry about filling them. But ignoring this can lead to some serious long-term consequences. Let’s look at what those are.

Potential infection risk
If you don’t fill cavities in kids’ baby teeth, there’s always the risk that the cavity will spread to the adult tooth beneath, causing infection in that tooth, your child’s gums, and potentially the jaw bone as well. When a dentists recommends a filling for a baby tooth, it’s largely for this reason.

Loss of adult teeth
On top of the infection risk, one thing that Dr. Claire Black or Dr. Robert Renck will point out as a risk of not filling a cavity in a baby tooth is the risk of losing the adult tooth beneath it. Cavities easily spread from tooth to tooth, and if the cavity gets bad enough it can cause one to form in the adult tooth beneath it. That means your child doesn’t lose just one tooth to a cavity, but two.

That results in higher dental costs throughout your child’s adolescence, and a painful experience for them as well. Here at Hendersonville Dentistry in Hendersonville, North Carolina, our team has seen this situation play out far too often. We don’t want to see it happen to you and your child.

For more information, or to schedule an appointment, call us today at 828-692-3933.