Dental Emergency
Your child’s dental health is important to us. We offer same-day appointments for patients in pain
Pediatric Dentistry NJ Treatment Procedures
A pulpotomy treatment is necessary when the pulp chamber in the center of a baby tooth becomes infected. This can occur if the tooth has untreated tooth decay and where the decay gets close to the pulp chamber or even penetrates it. When this occurs, the tissue in the pulp chamber will become irritated and inflamed and it’s likely your child will have toothache. Without treatment, the inflammation and infection will continue to spread, eventually resulting in an abscess. A pulpotomy treatment is used to try to save and restore the tooth. This procedure is very common and is usually quite successful. You might also hear a pulpotomy being called a baby tooth root canal, although the exact procedure is a little different and in some cases may be carried out on a child’s permanent adult teeth.
Our pediatric dentist in NJ will do everything possible to save baby teeth from extraction but sometimes it may be necessary to remove a tooth. This could be due to trauma or disease, or as part of orthodontic treatment. While we do our best to save baby teeth, our primary concern is to ensure the adult tooth which is forming underneath the baby tooth is not damaged in any way. If there is a risk the baby tooth may adversely affect the adult tooth then we will recommend its removal.
If your child has a cavity then it is important to remove the area of decay and to fill the tooth as soon as possible. This prevents the decay from spreading further and the filing seals out bacteria, preventing the tooth from becoming re-infected. Our kids dentist in NJ will carefully remove the infected and damaged area of the tooth before repairing it.
While amalgam fillings can be used to repair large areas of decay in back teeth, tooth colored composite fillings offer an alternative and less visible way to restore teeth damaged by tooth decay. The materials used in today’s modern composite material fillings are extremely strong. We use the best and most technologically advanced composite material to repair teeth and these come in many different shades and translucencies so the filing can be closely matched to your child’s natural teeth.
When a child has tooth decay or damage to one of their front teeth, we will use tooth colored composite resins to repair and restore the tooth. This ensures the filling cannot be seen, restoring esthetics and so it can be used normally for eating. Composite fillings can repair small chips and cracks in teeth which may have occurred due to a blow to the mouth and are able to repair small to medium sized cavities.
Children may require a crown if a tooth becomes damaged due to decay or trauma and it is not unusual for a child to suffer a knock to the mouth which can damage their permanent teeth. Crowns can be made from several different materials as they may have a metal substructure which is covered up with tooth colored porcelain, while more modern crowns are entirely metal-free.
Crowns for primary teeth may be made from stainless steel or they can be a combination of stainless steel and tooth colored composite. Some are made entirely from composite resin which is a material similar to that used for tooth colored filings.
Baby or primary teeth can be lost due to a variety of reasons. Some will become so badly decayed or infected they need to be extracted, while others may be knocked out in an accident. Occasionally a baby tooth will have been missing since birth. When a baby tooth isn’t present, we may suggest fitting your child with a space maintainer. This is a dental appliance which helps keep open the correct amount of space so the adult tooth has sufficient room to come through normally. The space maintainer is used until the adult tooth comes in.