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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!

On a sizzling hot day, there’s not much that makes us happier than heading to the water for a quick swim, some gentle laps, or even a rousing game of water polo. And this being a sizzling hot dental blog, we are happy to offer some tips on how to make your summer swim good for your dental health as well as your mental health!

• Mouthguards

You might use your mouthguard all the time—for biking, or basketball, or skiing. But in the pool? Absolutely! Anyone who has played water polo knows what a physical workout it is. Elbows! Hard tosses! Collisions! And it’s not just pool sports. Water-skiing on the lake, surfing in the ocean—anywhere humans and solid objects are involved, tooth and jaw injuries are possible. Don’t spend valuable summer hours tending to a cracked or broken tooth as a result of sports accidents.

And, unlikely though it seems, even hanging by the pool can be hazardous to your smile. Hard concrete edges wait to greet surfacing divers. Slippery cement and tiles surrounding the pool are the downfall of many a swimmer running to jump back into the water. Be aware of possible dental dangers, and use a mouthguard as a great proactive way to avoid them.

• Swimming Pools & Chlorine

Ah, the smell of chlorine! We all want to know that swimming pools are as clean as they can be, and one method of keeping them that way is with the addition of antimicrobials to the water. But too much exposure to chemicals can cause enamel erosion, or even a condition called “swimmer’s calculus.” Swimmer’s calculus is recognized by a hard, brownish, tartar deposit that appears on the front teeth of swimmers who spent a lot of hours in the pool. It’s a cosmetic problem, but one that’s difficult to get rid of without a professional cleaning. If you’re a competitive swimmer, or simply someone who spends many hours a week in treated water, give us a call if you notice hard-to-remove discoloration or tooth sensitivity.

• Retainers

Different people have different opinions on whether or not your retainer should be exposed to the chlorine in pool water. (Or the salt in saltwater or the bacteria in lake water.) Ask us for ours! But you’re best off leaving it in your bag or locker, anyway, because retainers can be easily lost in the water. They might be able to survive a swimming pool, but a lake or ocean rescue is very unlikely. Just remember to put your retainer in a case, in a safe spot, and replace it when you’re out of the water for the day.

Enjoy your time on the water, and don’t forget to schedule an exam with Dr. Maryam Azadpur and a professional cleaning if you haven’t been in the office for a while. If you do have a dental problem or an accident, give our Simsbury, CT office a call immediately. We want to make sure you dive in to summer fun with a healthy, beautiful smile!