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3 Amazing Advances In Dentistry That Can Lead To A Lifetime Of Healthier Teeth For Your Child

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Dentistry is evolving at a rapid pace, and there are some amazing advances in the works right now. As an adult, these advances will benefit you, but they especially benefit children who will have the advantage of new techniques being used on their adult teeth as soon as they emerge and throughout the rest of their lives. Read on to find out why your children may be able to live a life without those cavity fillings, typical teeth-straightening techniques, and occasionally missed emerging cavities that used to be inevitable, especially when you were a child. 

1. High-tech Tooth Remineralization Instead of Cavity Fillings

Taking good care of your teeth has always meant having those cavities drilled and filled as soon as they begin developing to keep them from becoming larger and sacrificing the integrity of the entire tooth. While it will still be important to have cavities treated early throughout your child's life, early treatment for them will be very different and there will be no drilling or artificial filling involved. 

There is a new device being tested and mastered right now that uses mild electrical currents to encourage teeth to fill themselves with new, healthy tooth structure when a small cavity develops. Not only will this help your child by eliminating drilling and filling, but later in life, your child will not have to worry about having fillings that fall out, as no cavity filling lasts forever. 

2. Braces That Need to Be Worn for Only a Few Months

If you had braces as a child, then you likely had one option, and that was a full set of metal brackets and wires and maybe even head-gear to go along with it. You likely also had to wear them for the average one to two years. While there have been many advances in types of braces that let wearers choose clear aligners or other less-noticeable teeth-straightening devices, the average wear-time of braces has remained steady at about one to two years or longer, even with the new types of braces that have been introduced.

When it is time for your child to wear braces, he or she may want to opt for metal ones, as there is a new technique that allows those brackets and wires to straighten teeth in only one-third of the time it took them to straighten teeth when you were a child. To put that period of time in perspective for what it means for a child, that means that a self-conscious child who doesn't want to wear braces to school could have their teeth straightened over a summer vacation from school.  

3. Easier Detection of Tooth Decay with Automated Dental Probes

Your first memories of visits to the dentist when you were a child likely involve that metal instrument, called a dental probe, that your dentist used to inspect your mouth and tap on teeth to manually inspect your tooth structure for signs of decay or other damage. This probe has always had its downfalls, even in the hands of the most highly skilled dentist. Not only can it look like a scary metal device to children, but even highly skilled dentists are only human and can use only their senses along with the probe to detect oral problems. 

Automated dental probes can kick dental check-ups up a notch by combining your child's dentist's senses with a high-tech, electronic tooth-inspecting probe. They can detect many dental problems, including those cavities just starting, called micro-cavities, more easily than a dentist alone, so they can be treated as early as possible to increase their chances of their ability to be remineralized before they grow to less controllable proportions. 

Your child may not have to endure many of the dental treatments you disliked as a child, and that is a great thing. Most parents dream of their children having better lives than they did, and with today's technology, that is possible in many aspects of life, including pediatric dentistry


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