What should I do if my child's tooth is broken? It is okay to just pull out the broken milk teeth and wait for the permanent teeth to grow? In fact, milk teeth are especially important for the development of teeth, jaw bones and muscles for children. When milk teeth have problems, we hope to try our best to save and retain the teeth for the children. However, when the tooth decay is too serious and the milk tooth has to be pulled out, or the milk tooth falls off due to an accident, it is necessary to consider a solution to prevent the problem from worsening, such as making a space maintainer.
The primary tooth can maintain the space for future permanent tooth growth. When the primary tooth is lost too early, the position of the surrounding teeth will slowly change. When the growth of the permanent teeth is hindered by lack of space, it may lead to misalignment or obstruction of permanent teeth, which increases the chance of getting malalignment of permanent teeth. The space maintainer is the savior to avoid this problem. It mainly maintains the space after tooth removal, and guides the permanent teeth that grow afterwards into place. If the space is not maintained, the growth and movement of the teeth will be difficult to predict and control. Knowing the normal sequence of losing baby teeth helps parents judge when a delay is worth investigating.
There are two types of children's dental space maintainers, removable and fixed. Removable space maintainers are generally applied to children who have lost multiple milk teeth. Similar to removable dentures, in addition to maintaining space, they can also replace the extracted teeth, helping children chew food or maintain the appearance. Fixed space maintainers are more common, used to maintain one or two missing teeth, usually fixed on the teeth lateral to the missing teeth.
Although the space maintainer has its effect, its size is relatively large to the oral cavity of young children, so they may feel discomfort when wearing it. On the other hand, the device in the mouth could be loosen or bend by pressing with the tongue or fingers, and the food will also easily get stuck on the device. Special care should be taken when performing cleaning. Children should try to avoid chewing hard foods or sticky foods such as gummies because this may cause the maintainer to fall off.
Children in the mixed dentition period have many changes in their teeth, and they should check their teeth regularly. If a space maintainer is installed, then it is recommended to follow the dentist's instructions and cooperate with a more intensive follow-up inspection. However, it should be noted that the space maintainer is a measure to help the permanent teeth grow smoothly. If the occlusion and alignment of the permanent teeth and the coordination between the teeth and facial muscles are poor in the future, there is still a need for orthodontic treatment.
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Whether a space maintainer is needed after a primary tooth is lost early depends on a children's dentist assessing how the permanent teeth are developing. To see how paediatric check-ups are arranged, refer to our paediatric dentistry service.
