Consultation

If you need some advice from a colleague, please contact us by phone and tell the staff at the reception that you would like to be put through to us or be called back as quickly as possible!

The following suggestions may help you when treating children yourself:

Dos

• X-rays: Please take x-rays before performing extractions, in order to carry out approximal diagnostics, to determine the depth of defects, as well as to assess the position of the next teeth!

• Honesty: Inform the child beforehand that a procedure may tickle or cause a sensation of pressure. If you only explain afterwards what has already happened, there is a risk that the child will already have lost its trust in you because of the new (possibly unpleasant) experience, and may no longer listen to you.

• Anaesthesia: Milk teeth feel pain as well, and a complex caries excavation will usually only be successful in the complete absence of pain. Treating children without an anaesthetic will usually be all right on the first occasion ... but not after that!

Don'ts

• Trepanation: Please do not perform trepanations on milk teeth, and do not recommend that these devitalised teeth be left in as placeholders. It can take a long time before natural exfoliation occurs. Also, an open milk tooth traps dirt and is a constant burden to the immune system!

• Incision: Please do not carry out incisions on intraoral swellings! The bones of a child are still very susceptible to medication. It is better to give an antibiotic (for at least six days) along with an analgesic (to get through the first two days) and ask your young patients to come in during the first few days to monitor their progress. After that you can remove the offending tooth once the swelling has gone down. If the swelling is very severe, and especially when it is extra-oral, do not hesitate but instead refer the child to a hospital at once.
  That is what we would do too!

• Untreated primary dentition: The period during which primary teeth are in place until the full development of the permanent dentition lasts about the first twelve years of life. During this time, a minor, initially harmless defect in a milk tooth can lead to a large carious lesion, which causes pain to the child and can even lead to the premature loss of the milk tooth. Even informed parents known that milk teeth are important placeholders, and we dentists ought to support them in their fight against caries and bacterial plaque!