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Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Dental for Pediatrics

dental for pediatrics

Children need their oral health taken care of to set them up for future health success.  Speak to your pediatric dentist about how they can help your child for more specific information.

Dental for pediatrics – Center for pediatric dental health

When people start to look for information on dental for pediatrics in Miami FL, it’s probably because they are interested in dental health, healthy smiles, and high quality dental services. Sometimes people do need more than that though, especially if it’s for a little one.

Finding a great office for pediatric dentistry that offers quality dental care and can help protect the oral health of your child and give them the kind of treatment that your child deserves might feel like it is hard to find. While there are many people labeling themselves as pediatric dentists, graduates of dental schools, or an office that can care for children, the fact of the matter is that pediatric dentistry is a specialization which means that it is not just anyone with the title of dentist who can do it.

It’s important to make sure that when you go to a dental office, you’re getting a person who has all the skills that you need to help treat you and your child. So what are some of the types of treatments that a pediatric dentist can provide? How important is that specialty? And are there any real benefits of a child seeing a pediatric dentist? Before we answer those questions and more, let’s take a look at what the experts of pediatric dentistry have to say about dental for pediatrics.

Pediatric dentistry provides primary and comprehensive preventive and therapeutic oral health care for infants and children from a few months old to their late teens (Shah S, 2017).

Oral health is an essential part of the overall health and welfare of every infant, child, and adolescent because poor oral health affects function, development, and quality of life (Shah S, 2017)

Pediatric oral health care should be safe, continual, wide-ranging, easily accessible, cost effective, good in quality, and tailored to every child and their family (Shah S, 2017).

dental for pediatrics

What types of treatments do pediatric dentists provide? Centers for pediatric dental sedation

Essentially, pediatric dentists provide the exact types of services that regular dentists do except with a particular emphasis on children. The fact of the matter is that children have some unique dental considerations that adults simply don’t even have to think about. Once you reach a certain age, your teeth have already come in, you already know if they are going to be crooked or not, and you also have a good idea of how your teeth are going to look in a decade or two from now, assuming that you give them proper care.

However, when working with children, these things are not all known in advance and so getting regular checkups, x-rays, and exams will make sure there’s enough space for teeth to come in so it will not cause future long-term oral discomfort or potential health issues. These are all important reasons for seeing a pediatric dentist.

Is pediatric dentistry a specialty? Center for pediatric dental care

It absolutely is a specialty! As mentioned earlier, children have different considerations when it comes to their dental health when compared to adults. Part of that is because of the unique stage of development that a child is in, and part of that is because children can sometimes be more difficult dental clients than adults.

Children are often scared, nervous about the situation, and have never experienced this type of medical treatment before. Because of that, pediatric dentists are especially trained not just in the hard skills of how to work in a smaller mouth and learning about child tooth development but also in the soft skills about how to calm a child, and how to make what can appear to be a uncomfortable or nervous situation into one that the kid not only goes to but may even enjoy.

What are the benefits of seeing a pediatric dentist early? The center for pediatric dental care & orthodontics

While all of the benefits are too numerous to list here, let’s give a brief summary of a few of them. One is of course that visiting a pediatric dentist early can help catch serious dental health problems before they even start. Your pediatric dentist is going to see issues long before you do. With regular checkups and x-rays, your pediatric dental office is going to have a very good idea of how your children’s teeth are going to develop, what is likely to happen in the future, any potential issues that could cause serious health problems down the line, and also know the appropriate treatment plan to help head them off.

Essentially, a huge amount of pediatric dental medicine is preventative care. It is always far cheaper and less painful to offer preventative care than it is to try and fix a problem once it has already become well developed.

Another simple reason to go to a pediatric dentist early is it gets your child into the good habit of understanding that this type of medical treatment is an important part of life. Kids who only see their dentist during an emergency are kids who are likely to associate the dental office with pain, discomfort, and even nervousness or fear. This can cause a ripple effect down through a child’s life or even as an adult when they have a strong aversion to visiting the dental office because of past negative memories.

Naturally, children who are afraid to visit the office become adults who are afraid to visit the dental office and as mentioned before are likely to allow minor issues to develop into serious ones all out of a simple desire to avoid the dental office. However, having regular visits will not only improve the long-term health for your child’s oral care but also help ensure that they associate the dental office with positive memories, allowing them to have greater oral health throughout their entire life.

Why should you choose a pediatric dentist for your kids?  Dental for pediatrics

Picking a great pediatric dentist for your child is important as you want one that’s going to offer quality care for your child and make sure that your child is not just comfortable going but even excited, too. Many dental offices work hard to ensure that even their smallest clients are well taken care of and that children find going to the dental office something they enjoy.

To that end, many offices work to offer high quality games and toys in the waiting room, free consultations so you and your little one can visit and see the office first hand, free children’s toothpaste and toothbrushes, and sometimes even toys or prizes for having met certain oral healthcare benchmarks. By associating oral health with fun, your pediatric dentist is able to set your child up for a lifetime of great oral health.

Reference:

Shah S. (2017). Pediatric dentistry- novel evolvement. Annals of medicine and surgery (2012), 25, 21–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amsu.2017.12.005