decay in baby teeth

Toothsmith

peachyprice wrote: »

Sorry, that doesn't make sense.

One day has to be the first day of decay, whether that's 6 days, 6 weeks, 6 months after a check up. You can't see decay before it's started and at the time of the check-up it hadn't.

When I noticed it it was only at the very early stages, very fine darkish lines in the 'creases' of the teeth that could easily be mistaken for food, not full blown holes and rot!

I don't believe for one minute that she missed anything, she's an excellent dentist and family friend and would certainly never have ignored anything wrong with my childrens teeth, if anything she's even more thorough with us.

Apologies for not making sense.

You are quite right, decay has to appear at some time.

It doesn't spontaneously appear as a hole that needs a filling though. It can first be seen as a white chalky mark.

There are many stages it then goes through before the tooth is so damaged that you need to take a drill to it.

I have several patients that I have been monitoring small decayed areas for for well over 6 years. With application of fluoride varnish at each check-up, and a few simple changes in diet and behaviour they can be stopped, or even reversed.

I cannot think of any reason that would take a child with no decay to a child that needed 8 fillings in the space of 6 weeks.

Even if you started a child on sugary mouth-washes every few hours, you'd be hard pressed to do that much damage in that short time.

binkyboo_2

Is there any chance it could have been damaged? My three year old is having to have her front tooth extracted because she fell off a chair and damaged the tooth it started to go discoloured and she developed an abcess on her gum. When she was assessed at the dentist who said she needed to have the tooth out she said that it also had a cavity in the back of the damaged tooth and there was no way I would have seen this as it was only visible with a mirror in her mouth. No one has told me whether the cavity has been caused by the damage to the tooth or if it is decay so I am now very concerned as to how all her other teeth can be in such good condition and for one front tooth to have decayed. she is having to have a general anesthetic in hospital to have the tooth removed so perhaps I will find out more then.