After a day or two of complaining about a toothache, you finally take your child to their dentist. Upon examination, the pediatric dentist says they have a deep cavity and recommends a procedure that’s like a root canal for kids. But your child only has baby teeth—should the tooth just be removed entirely? In this post, you’ll learn about the treatments that can rescue your little one’s baby teeth and why early extraction isn’t the answer.
How to Save Decayed Baby Teeth
If your dentist strongly suggests a root canal on a baby tooth, they plan to remove the decayed portions, including the pulp or nerve center. This process involves clearing out the inner chamber, sealing it, and restoring the tooth with a stainless steel crown, ideally protecting it from future decay. Your dentist may use one of the following terms to refer to the procedure your child needs, but they basically accomplish the same goal: saving the baby tooth from extraction!
Pulpotomy
When the infection has penetrated through the crown portion of the baby tooth, it can usually be resolved through a pulpotomy, which is the less invasive “root canal” for primary teeth. Instead of removing the entire pulp, the pediatric dentist will only remove the crown pulp, leaving the root alive and intact.
Pulpectomy
Sometimes the decay extends from the crown into the baby tooth’s root. There may even be an abscess or collection of pus at the root of the tooth under the gums. In this case, a procedure called a pulpectomy is needed to get rid of all the infected tissue, which entails taking out the entire tooth’s pulp and leaving most of the tooth structure behind for continued use.
Why Baby Teeth Are Worth Saving
A few years down the road, your child will eventually lose their primary teeth to make way for their permanent, adult teeth. With this in mind, you may wonder whether it would be less hassle to simply remove the infected baby tooth rather than perform a pulpotomy or pulpectomy.
However, baby teeth serve multiple important purposes for your child’s oral development. First, they enable your child to bite and chew their food and enjoy a healthy diet for optimal growth. Second, these teeth are like placeholders for permanent teeth. Without them, the adult teeth could erupt misaligned or more misaligned than they would be with the baby teeth there to guide them. For these reasons and many more, your dentist would prefer to hold onto baby teeth until they are ready to come out naturally than extract them early.
Ultimately, your child’s smile is worth preserving as much as possible. Even though they will lose their baby teeth at some point, they need to have healthy, strong teeth to support their growth and development. Let your child have their baby teeth a little bit longer so that they can have better oral health in the future!
About the Practice
At Sprout Dentistry for Kids, our board-certified pediatric dentists, Dr. Sage and Dr. Justin, both believe that prevention is the best approach to dental health for kids; however, they each have an extensive background in children’s dentistry for advanced procedures like pulpotomies and pulpectomies. If your child needs to have a root canal on a baby tooth, you can schedule an appointment with us by calling our McKinney office at 469-813-7127 or visiting our Contact Us page here.