As a general rule, a first visit to the dentist is scheduled around two and a half years, three years at the latest. As long as you have not noticed any abnormality in the shape or color of a tooth, and also provided that there are no harmful eating habits (continued on-demand night-time (breast)feeding for too long or bottles of milk at night, fruit juice or sodas all day long, sweets in excess, etc.) because in this case, cavities may already have appeared!
First of all, do not let him know that going to the dentist is painful, that you are going to give him an injection, that it is just a bad moment to go through,... Make an appointment with a specialized dentist for children, who has all the tools (literally and figuratively) at their disposal to make dental care much less painful than in some adults' memories, and so that your child leaves the practice with a smile ! Do not be surprised if, during the first appointment, a complete caries assessment is performed with a plaster applied to relieve the pain. The child needs to be explained what is going to happen and having a pleasant contact for a first appointment helps relieve stress more surely than with a difficult treatment for the first time!
Make an appointment with the dentist explaining what you see: broken tooth, displaced tooth, moving tooth, expelled tooth, tooth brought up in the gum,…. If this is a definitive tooth fracture, it is worth keeping the broken piece. ATTENTION, the major emergency is the expulsion of a definitive incisor! In all cases, the tooth must be kept (by not touching the root but rather by manipulating it by the crown). You can rinse it with clean water. If you're feeling good about it, it is best to put it back in place immediately and have the child bite a handkerchief before going to the dentist who will place a retainer. If this is not possible, the tooth should be transported in a WET storage medium (milk, saline solution, water). The best prognosis: when the tooth has been out of its socket for less than an hour ...
Most of the time this is a transitory phenomenon. Pathological tooth wear is uncommon. The dentist will examine your child's teeth and tell you what the situation is.
Do not panic ! This is very common. If the baby tooth is moving well, we can give the child a few weeks delay by showing the him/her how to move his baby tooth so that it falls on its own. If the baby tooth does not move, and the final tooth has emerged by more than 5 mm, it will be necessary to plan to extract the baby tooth (be careful not to tell the child that the dentist is going to "tear out the tooth", that is not the correct vocabulary and it gives an impressive and negative image!). In most cases, the final tooth will go back into place with the pressure of the tongue.
The permanent teeth are already forming, in the bone, in a small bag between the roots of the milk molars. If a cavity is not treated, it will progress to touching the pulp (the nerve) of the baby tooth. This can cause pain, but the tooth can just as easily necrode (die) slowly, painlessly, with the subsequent formation of an abscess which can go as far as damaging the final forming tooth! And on average, the last baby teeth fall out around… 12 years old!
If you see a hole in a tooth, you don't have to be a dentist to diagnose cavities. But if the decay has caused a cavity, it is because it has been evolving for a long time, and therefore it is large. However, who says large decay sometimes says a tooth that is difficult to anesthetize (so the treatment goes less well), more important filling (therefore more expensive), sometimes need to devitalize the tooth (therefore weakened tooth and more expensive treatment). On the other hand, diagnosing cavities (especially interdental) at an earlier stage sometimes makes it possible to avoid treatment by implementing adequate prevention means (flossing, fluoridation, change in brushing and / or eating habits.). If a treatment must be performed, these earlier detected cavities will be faster and easier to treat, with a session that will be less difficult for the child to endure.
