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Providing dental care for patients with special needs can be a challenge at times, both for the dentist and the family of the individual. Fortunately, Dr. Maryam Azadpur and our team at Simsbury Pediatric & Adolescent Dentistry have the experience needed to provide optimal care for your special-needs child. Here are just a few of the ways our office works to help those who need a little extra care.

Assistance with at-home dental health care

We understand that sometimes at-home dental care can be extremely difficult for those with special needs. Individuals with physical difficulties, which may prevent them from holding the toothbrush, and those with developmental issues, who may have difficulty understanding the importance of dental hygiene, need extra attention with regard to home hygiene care. Our team at Simsbury Pediatric & Adolescent Dentistry can provide support and education to ensure your child will achieve and maintain a healthy smile. For example, devising improvised toothbrushes to help patients get a properly grip, creating a specialized meal plan, and establishing a more frequent office visitation schedule to monitor overall dental health are all areas where our office is happy to help.

Coordinating office care

Dr. Maryam Azadpur and our team understand that sometimes special-needs patients feel anxiety when it comes to receiving dental care. In many cases, reliably seeing the same dental health professionals can help to promote a relationship and soothe the patient. We encourage special-needs patients to make appointments at the optimal time of day for them to help everything go smoothly as well. We also encourage preparing your child in advance of the appointment so he or she is not surprised in the office. In certain situations, Dr. Maryam Azadpur may also recommend sedation dentistry. Occasionally, special-needs patients are too overwhelmed by the thought of dental care and exams are best performed with the support of light sedation.

Accommodating physical needs

We also understand that special needs patients sometimes need physical accommodations. Two of the more common examples we face are patients in wheelchairs who need access to the office. We are fully compliant with all accessibility regulations to make sure our patients receive the care they need. Other patients need physical props for their mouth to help keep it open if they are physically unable to do so.

Dental care for patients with special needs requires knowledge and experience of limitations and how to address them. In our Simsbury, CT office, you will find an accommodating staff ready to help, so your child can receive optimal dental care.

Baby teeth come with a built-in expiration date. That charming first smile is meant to make way for a healthy, beautiful adult smile. Unfortunately, before they are ready to make way for permanent teeth, primary teeth can be affected by decay, trauma, or infection—problems which can lead to damage to the pulp within the tooth. If your dentist tells you that your child’s tooth needs specialized endodontic treatment, is treatment really that much better for your child than losing a baby tooth prematurely?

Quite often, the answer is yes!

Baby teeth do much more than serve as temporary stand-ins for adult teeth. They are essential for:

• Biting and chewing—a full set of baby teeth helps your child develop proper chewing, which leads to healthy digestion. And chewing also helps build face and jaw muscles.
• Speech development—primary teeth help guide speech production and pronunciation.
• Spacing—a baby tooth serves as a place holder for the adult tooth waiting to arrive. If a primary tooth is lost too early, the remaining baby teeth may drift from their proper location. This, in turn, can cause overcrowding or misalignment of the permanent teeth when they do erupt.

Baby teeth, like adult teeth, contain living pulp tissue. The pulp chamber inside the crown (the visible part of the tooth) and the root canals (inside each root) hold nerves, blood vessels, and connective tissue. When the pulp is damaged by trauma or infected, a baby tooth can still be saved with endodontic treatment. Endodontic treatment in baby teeth can take two forms.

• “Vital” pulp is pulp that can be saved. Vital pulp therapy uses procedures to deal with damaged pulp inside the crown, or visible part, of the tooth. Pulp therapy can be used on teeth when only the top of the pulp has been affected by decay, limited exposure, infection, or trauma, but the root pulp remains healthy. Specific treatment will depend on the nature of the pulp injury, and a crown will usually be placed over the tooth after treatment to protect it.
• With non-vital pulp, your dentist will probably recommend a traditional root canal procedure. All of the pulp tissue will be removed from inside the crown and the roots, and the pulp chamber and root canals will then be cleaned, disinfected, shaped, and filled. Finally, because the treated tooth will be more fragile, a crown will be used to protect the tooth from further damage.

There can be good reasons for extracting a seriously damaged baby tooth, and there are situations where preserving the tooth is the best and healthiest option for your child. Discuss your options with Dr. Maryam Azadpur when you visit our Simsbury, CT office for the safest, most effective way to treat your child’s compromised tooth.

“But they are only baby teeth; won’t they just fall out?” Our team at Simsbury Pediatric & Adolescent Dentistry has had these questions asked many times from parents over the years. Primary teeth, or “baby teeth,” will indeed come out eventually, to be replaced by permanent teeth as the child grows and develops. These teeth serve a great purpose as the child continues to develop and require specific care.

Because baby teeth are temporary, some parents are unenthusiastic about fixing cavities in them. This may be due to the cost or having to force a child undergo the process—especially having to receive an injection. But if a cavity is diagnosed early enough, an injection can often be avoided. More important, failure to fill cavities in primary teeth when they are small and manageable can have lasting consequences in cost and health concerns. Serious illnesses in children have been diagnosed which began as a cavity.

Primary teeth act as a guide for permanent teeth. When decay reaches the nerve and blood supply of a tooth, this can cause an abscess. Severe pain and swelling may result. At that point, the only treatment options are either to remove the tooth or to perform a procedure similar to a baby root canal. When a primary tooth is lost prematurely—to decay or a painful abscess—the adjacent teeth will often shift and block the eruption of a permanent tooth. Braces or spacers become necessary to avoid crowding or impaction of the permanent tooth.

There is nothing more heartbreaking for Dr. Maryam Azadpur than to have to treat a child experiencing pain and fear. To all the parents of my little patients our team strongly recommend filling a small cavity and not waiting until it becomes a larger problem such as those described above.

Prevention is the key to a healthy mouth for our smallest patients. Parents should allow the child to brush his or her teeth using a pea-sized amount of fluoride toothpaste and then take a turn to ensure the plaque gets removed from all surfaces: cheek side, tongue side, and chewing edges of all the teeth.

Happy July! We hope everyone’s summer is off to a great start! Our team at Simsbury Pediatric and Adolescent Dentistry is looking forward to enjoying weekend getaways, outdoor summer fun, and time with family.

Our very own Alison and Kelly are celebrating birthdays this month! If you have an upcoming visit, be sure to wish them a happy birthday!

We want to take this time to remind our patients to stay on top of their oral health during the summer months. When children are home from school, they tend to eat more snacks throughout the day with increased outdoor activity. Because of this, we can sometimes forget to drink water, which helps wash away food in your mouth between brushing.

In addition to this, we encourage staying away from sugary treats as they can lead to cavities. Regardless of what you choose to consume, it’s important to drink lots of water, brush twice a day, and floss once a day. Did we mention to drink lots of water?

We have a few office announcements! On July 1st, we gave away a $500 gift certificate for the Hartford Yard Goats to a lucky family whose daughter wrote a very sweet review. She stated she gets “treated like a queen” when she comes into the office for a visit. We loved hearing that! Our third quarter drawing will be for $500 to Great Wolf Lodge! Be sure to write a review or refer a friend to our office to earn entries.

For those of you who haven’t visited our office for a while, we are asking that you call our office once you arrive in the parking lot. At that time, we will provide you with instructions on when to enter the building. Please note, masks are required in the building and we will have you complete a Covid questionnaire. Additionally, temperature checks will be taken for everyone coming in, even the FedEx guy!

If you haven’t schedule visit for a while due to the risk of Covid, we want to assure you that we employ consistently high cleaning standards and practices, both before and throughout Covid. All clinical staff wears a high level of PPE and the front desk staff wears masks and work jackets. We also have plexiglass that separates our front desk employees and patients. On top of all of this, we continue to maintain social distancing in the reception area.

To schedule a visit, please call us at 860-658-7548, Monday through Friday (except Wednesday) from 8am to 5pm. You can also send us an email requesting an appointment or you can click on the interactive chat on our website and request an appointment.

We also want to thank for everyone's patience while we launched our new patient management software system. We had quite the learning curve and are feeling more and more confident with the new system each day. We are also in the midst of planning our 20th Year Celebration, to be held on Sept 25. More details to follow.

From all of us here at Simsbury Pediatric and Adolescent Dentistry, we hope that you have a safe and healthy summer!