Importance Of Space Maintainers for Children

When growing up, losing teeth is customary among children. Unfortunately, some kids miss one or more teeth prematurely from severe tooth decay, gum disease, genetic conditions, or injuries that cause them to lose teeth or need extraction.

Tooth loss affects children similarly to adults impacting their smile, eating, and speaking abilities or causing orthodontic challenges. Space maintainers help children temporarily close the gaps in their smile, completing their smile until their permanent tooth is ready to emerge.

Space Maintainers Help Protect Your Child Oral Health

Unfortunately, many parents are unaware of what space maintainers are and how they play a crucial role in the child’s developing smile. The primary teeth function as placeholders for the permanent teeth that develop later. When a baby tooth falls out, the neighboring teeth start drifting to fill the gap or cause the eruption of permanent teeth at an awkward angle.

Permanent teeth erupting at awkward angles increase children’s risk of orthodontic problems and make them susceptible to tooth decay and gum disease, requiring intensive treatments later. The use of space maintainers from the pediatric dentist in Milford, CT, can prevent the need for costly dental procedures besides discomfort for children in the long run.

Cleaning and Caring Space Maintainers Is Not Challenging

Caring for space maintainers is straightforward, and children can look after them like their other teeth. Children must continue brushing twice daily and flossing once if they have a fixed space maintainer in their mouths. However, if children have removable space maintainers, they must wear the device for a minimum of 14 hours per day, removing it merely for cleaning.

Whether your child has received fixed or removable space maintainers from orthodontics Milford, they must avoid sticky, chewy, and complex foods to prevent damage to the prosthetics. In addition, parents are advised not to allow children to press the devices for fear of damaging them.

What Happens If You Ignore Space Maintainers for Children?

If you think children’s teeth are expected to fall out, you will benefit by thinking differently. Undoubtedly children’s teeth fall out to make way for their permanent teeth. Unfortunately, when children suffer from premature tooth loss, and the permanent teeth emerge at awkward angles, children suffer from significant gaps between their teeth or develop crooked teeth needing orthodontic treatments.

If you think orthodontics near me can provide the treatments needed by children, you are in for another surprise because crooked and gapped teeth need more than merely braces on their teeth because children become prone to the infections described earlier to need frequent appointments with pediatric dentists for disorders like tooth decay, gum disease, et cetera. Children will also require orthodontic treatments to straighten their teeth, which are not cost-effective. In addition, the infections in their mouths can result in additional tooth loss and require more investments in dental prosthetics to prevent their teeth from shifting.

Children will lose their primary teeth by age 12 or 13, but if left unchecked, premature tooth loss causes children to develop oral health issues besides makes them self-conscious about their smile. In addition, children might lose confidence when teased in school by their peers to deal with the lack of self-confidence when they grow up.

Fortunately, you can prevent the consequences of premature tooth loss in your child’s mouth by consulting the Milford pediatric dentist and investing in space maintainers to fill the spaces in children’s mouths comfortably with space maintainers. The devices help your child maintain their aesthetic appearance without causing undue complications in their mouths from orthodontic imperfections leading to the development of crooked, gapped, and misaligned teeth.

Investing in space maintainers is a cost-effective solution to avoid children needing orthodontic treatments at high prices later. If you discuss your child’s tooth loss with orthodontist Milford CT, the specialists will undoubtedly recommend these devices to help close the gaps in your child’s smile and the spaces in their mouth.

Besides helping your child’s oral health, space maintainers also assist you in saving money or at least planning for orthodontic treatments later by allowing you sufficient time to set aside money in a separate account for the child’s treatment if necessary at a later date. Therefore whenever your child loses a tooth or two, do not consider it a childhood phenomenon. Instead, contact the pediatric dentist nearby to get space maintainers for your child and prevent considerable problems from affecting them and you.

If you haven’t heard about space maintainers for children and your child is affected by premature tooth loss Big Smiles Pediatric Dentistry can help you and your child benefit from these devices. Kindly arrange an appointment with the practice to immediately get space maintainers for your child.