Paediatric Dentistry in Toowoomba
Services
Oral experts group
Dental Treatments for Children
We are specialized in Paediatric Dentistry. Children’s dental care that is kind and enjoyable. Ensure the dental health of your child. Make an appointment right away!
Please note that no Oral Experts Group dentist is a registered specialist.
The Oral Experts Group in Toowoomba are now offering FREE dentistry to children who are eligible through Medicare CDBS scheme. Give us a call for more details.
We have also have reduced the price of children’s dentistry dramatically (compared to the average ADA fee) to help give a happy healthy smile to the young. Extraction of baby teeth is also almost half the price of adult teeth. We hope to encourage families to care for their teeth by making quality dentistry more affordable.
It is important that baby (milk) teeth are looked after. These are not disposable as some might think. Baby teeth are necessary for appearance, eating and smiling, are an important component in developing speech and are also very important to ensure the correct positioning of the adult teeth.
Recent studies of the dental health of Australian children’s teeth seems to indicate that there has been an increase in decay rates, known as Early Childhood Caries, caries in children is the second most common reason for hospitalisation. This is even more so in Queensland in towns where the water supplies have not had fluoride supplements added to the water.
Prevention of early childhood caries is easily achieved. Knowing how caries (tooth decay) occurs will help you understand how to prevent decay in your child’s teeth.
Bacteria in our mouth are responsible for caries. Up to 300 species of bacteria and other micro-organisms can inhabit our mouth. When the sugars and starches in food stay stuck to our teeth and the bacteria feed on them, forming plaque, the acids produced by the bacteria eat holes in the tooth, leading to caries.
The risks that lead to early childhood caries include the following:
- A high-sugar diet
- Continually snacking (grazing)
- Sleeping with milk, juice, soft drink or cordial in a bottle
- Dummies coated with a sugary substance, e.g. honey
- No regular brushing of teeth
The accumulation of sugar and starch which occurs under the above situations allows the bacteria to increase in number which then increases the amount of acids that eventually lead to caries.
To prevent the risk of early childhood caries, requires addressing all of the above situations.
Ensure your child has a wide variety of nutritious foods high in calcium (milk, cheese) and low in acids and sugars (fruit, wholegrain cereals, lean meats and dairy products).
Limit your child’s eating to selected times and reduce the number of snacks. Give your baby or toddler a feed before they go to bed, clean their teeth and offer a bottle of plain water.
Do not coat dummies with honey or any other sweetener. It is also important not to clean a dummy by placing it in your mouth and then giving it to your baby. Your mouth contains bacteria that causes decay and you will infect your baby with bacteria that causes caries.
Brushing the baby teeth morning and night until the age of eight years needs to be done by an adult. Children do not have the manual skills to brush effectively until this age. From 10 years on children should be able to brush their teeth effectively without any adult supervision.
Brush with water or a low-fluoride toothpaste in children up to the age of 12 months using a brush with a small head and soft rounded bristles. Use only a smear of toothpaste and ensure the child spits out the toothpaste after you have brushed their teeth. The teeth should be brushed for approximately two minutes in a systematic manner to ensure that every tooth surface is cleaned.
It is important to encourage your child to let you brush their teeth and also to lead by example as this is a very important way to encourage your child to continue with a lifelong habit of good oral hygiene and an absence of tooth decay. From one year of age it is strongly advised that your child sees a dentist for regular visits.
Let one of the friendly dentists in the Oral Experts Group help in ensuring that your child does not suffer from the easily preventable disease of tooth caries.
This information was compiled from information supplied by the Australian Dental Association. Further information can be obtained from their website www.ada.org.au or by asking one of the Dentists in the Oral Experts Group
