3 Serious Problems Your Child's Dental X-Rays Could Catch Early
Getting a regular set of dental X-rays when your child visits the dentist is a must. This simple, painless procedure can reveal what's going on under the surface of your child's gums and display what's happening inside their teeth. Not every condition can be caught with a simple visual examination—some problems, like the three explained here, can only be caught early with X-rays.
Impacted Teeth
Having impacted teeth is not standard, but it happens to many children nonetheless. This is an issue where after the baby teeth fall out, adult teeth start to crowd each other and become impacted—in other words, two teeth crash into each other. In some instances, this can actually happen because a tooth is growing in completely wrong.
When this happens, your dentist can intervene by either prescribing braces or by manually extracting and replacing the tooth. Without help, your child could experience a lot of pain, and their teeth could be badly pushed out of place.
Wisdom Tooth Development
Catching the growth of wisdom teeth early on is integral to giving your child the easiest wisdom tooth extraction possible.
In the early stages, wisdom teeth don't set their roots down. It's this stage that your dentist wants to catch. This will allow them to determine if your child's wisdom teeth will need to be removed due to overcrowding. If they decide that it's necessary, the teeth can be plucked out when they're still relatively young, making the surgery much easier and causing less trauma and discomfort for your child.
Resorption
Finally, a rare tooth condition called resorption is possible and can only be caught in the early stages with X-rays.
Tooth resorption is essentially when a cavity forms on the inside of the tooth instead of the outside. This kind of cavity isn't your child's fault or due to poor dental hygiene; instead, it's a result of the function of the body to naturally absorb the roots of baby teeth when they're ready to fall out. However, this mechanism can sometimes happen with adult teeth, too, slowly chipping away at the interior of the tooth. This problem can be interrupted by a dentist by removing the part of the tooth that's damaged and filling it, but only if it's discovered early on. Since resorption starts on the inside, it can quickly damage the pulp, root, and even exterior portion of the tooth if given enough time, causing a lot of pain and ultimately potentially necessitating a root canal for your child.
X-rays are great and help to catch all kinds of issues early on. If you have concerns or questions about your child's dental health or the X-ray procedure, contact your pediatric dental care service.
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