During my routine clinical practice, I meet many children with dental cavities. When I start to explain the treatment plan to the parents, they usually say “Doctor, are cavities really a serious problem? We mean, he is just a kid, and these teeth will shed anyway.”
This is a very common mistake. Cavities can be a serious problem in children if they aren’t diagnosed and treated early. You can’t imagine how many patients come to the orthodontic clinic with malocclusion (crooked teeth) problems as a consequence of neglected cavities in childhood.
And you may be surprised if I tell you that tooth cavities may (very rarely) lead to death.
To understand this, let’s review the consequences of the neglected dental cavities in order.
First, the child will feel pain when eating on the affected tooth. So, as a self defense, he will try not to eat on that side. This will lead to temporo-mandibular joint (TMJ) disorders due to unbalanced occlusion (biting pattern). The most common symptom of TMJ disorder is headache, especially in the morning.
It may lead also to incomplete chewing of food, and you should not underestimate this problem. When you swallow a large fragment of food, the digestive enzymes cannot work properly, leading to incomplete digestion.
So, no matter how healthy the food is, the child will not get the best out of it.
Then, the cavities will become deeper and reach the tooth’s pulp. Then the pain will occur throughout the day. It may be severe, prevent sleeping, and not respond to analgesics (painkillers). The child will not be able to go to school, study or even play. Sometimes the tooth becomes completely non-restorable, and we have to go for extraction. Deciduous (baby) tooth extraction is a hard decision to make, and may lead to some serious long term problems. When we extract a deciduous tooth, the adjacent teeth move to close the space, which has to be filled later with the permanent one. So, when the time for eruption of the permanent tooth comes, there will not be enough space left for it to move into. So, it either becomes impacted inside the jaw, or it will erupt in an abnormal place, maybe lingual (towards the tongue) or buccal (towards the cheeks) to its corresponding permanent tooth, leading to malocclusion.That is why we strongly recommend using a space maintainer after extraction of deciduous teeth.
Another serious problem caused by neglected cavities is the formation of abscesses. An abscess is a collection of pus. This abscess can open either inside or outside the mouth. If it opens outside the mouth it will be a big esthetic problem because it may leave a scar.If it opens inside the mouth it causes bad taste, and it might be swallowed, leading to stomach problems. Sometimes there is no abscess formation, but the infection spread through the fascia leads to fascial-space infection. It is a very serious problem which may lead to suffocation and then death if left untreated. So, and regarding to the above illustration, yes, cavities in children can be a serious problem.
Contact a dentist or dental hygienist at Water Brook Dental in Washington DC for a dental check-up and other dental needs. Water Brook Dental has two locations in Washington DC. The Columbia Heights location is very conveniently located to Downtown DC, Northeast DC, Adams Morgan, Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, U-Street Corridor, Mount Pleasant and many other parts of Washington. The Eastern Ave NW location is conveniently located to Downtown Silver Spring, Takoma Park MD, Silver Spring MD, Colesville, and other parts of Maryland as well as Northern Virginia and other parts of Virginia.
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