Seaver and Pittman, DDS
| Visit Our Site | Subscribe | Unsubscribe | February 2012 |
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Check Off Your Checkup
If you are heading into the hospital to have a procedure done, its important to plan ahead. When you are compiling that necessary to-do list before your hospital stay, don’t forget about having a dental exam. Before surgery, your dental health is as important as any other aspect of your overall health. While most people have healthy mouths that won’t have an unknown infection lingering, studies show that an unchecked oral infection can derail your surgery and affect other parts of your body. While your body struggles to heal from your procedure, that oral bacteria can enter your bloodstream and travel to your heart, artificial joint, lungs or even your brain.
Bacteria in your heart could cause a grave condition called infective endocarditis. This is an inflammation of the lining of the heart. Besides being a dangerous heart condition, it’s possible for a mass of the infected lining to dislodge and travel to your brain, causing a stroke.
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Temporarily Yours
At awards shows, a seat filler temporarily fills an empty seat vacated by an award winner or presenter. The seat filler is needed to keep the auditorium looking good on television. In this same way, your mouth may sometimes need a ‘seat filler’ to continue to look good until a permanent solution is available. Enter the temporary crown.
This temporary crown is necessary because before a permanent crown can be seated, the original tooth must be reshaped into a smaller size. To protect your reshaped tooth while waiting for the new crown to be seated, we use a temporary crown. This temporary crown protects the newly reshaped tooth, withstands chewing force and keeps your other teeth from tipping.
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Mind The Gap
Space exploration is an exciting concept but not when we are talking about teeth. A prematurely empty space in your child’s mouth can cause the surrounding teeth to tip and drift. This tipping can cause the permanent tooth to come in crookedly. And like dominos, one crooked tooth will move the surrounding teeth out of place. Once teeth are misaligned, it will take orthodontic intervention to fix them. Fortunately, the prevention is simple: use a space maintainer.
Losing a tooth too soon is not unusual. A primary tooth can be prematurely lost for several reasons including injury or decay. Your instinct might be to do nothing because the permanent tooth will eventually erupt, but primary teeth serve a specific function; they:
guard the area where the permanent tooth will erupt.
guide the permanent tooth into position.
help your child chew.
affect normal jawbone and facial muscle development.
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Scratch and Dent
Oral piercings may be a popular way to make a fashion statement but your teeth may not appreciate it. Tongue and lip piercings can lead to serious problems with your teeth, gums and overall health.
Some health related problems with mouth hardware include:
Chipped Teeth – Contact between the metal hardware and your teeth will begin to weaken and eventually chip and wear down your teeth, especially the front teeth.
Gum Disease – In addition to wearing and weakening your teeth, tongue hardware will begin to erode your gum tissue making way for periodontitis and loose teeth.
Infections – The open and continuous wounding of your tongue and gums provide a breeding ground for infections.
Damage to Existing Dental Work – The same wear and tear that chips your natural teeth can also damage your fillings and crowns.
Hypersensitivity to Metals – This form of contact dermatitis can make it difficult for you to have future dental procedures and other surgical procedures that require contact with metals.
Disease Susceptibility – Having an open wound in your mouth can make you more susceptible to blood-borne diseases like Hepatitis.
Scar Tissue – Development of scar tissue can interfere with eating, swallowing and even breathing.
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Stop The Spread
Did you know that babies aren’t born with decay-causing bacteria? And yet, four million infants as young as two years old develop severe tooth decay every year. How is that possible?
Caries, the oral bacterial infection that causes tooth decay, can be innocently passed to a baby through saliva. Someone who has active caries such as a parent, sibling, grandparent can unknowingly spread caries through kisses, sharing drinks and even blowing on baby’s warm food. Like an outbreak, you can follow the infection from point A to point B.
In addition to causing cavities, caries bacteria can stay in a child’s mouth her/his entire lifetime and lead to serious health issues like heart disease and diabetes.
It’s important to protect your baby from caries by:
- Sterilizing eating utensils and sippy cups thoroughly
- Never place anything of your baby’s in your mouth (spoons, pacifiers, etc)
- Don’t allow children to share drinks, straws or cups
- Keep toothbrushes from touching when stored
To prevent increasing damage, we need to regularly examine your infant’s teeth to look for caries lesions and decay, assess the entire family’s caries risk and create an oral care program to prevent caries transfer to other family members. Call today to setup a family plan for caries control.