Is your child at risk of tooth decay?

By Hong Kee-sang

“Tooth decay” or “dental caries” is a “lifestyle related chronic disease” like others such as obesity or hypertension. Risk for these systemic diseases is calculated based on certain parameters such as family history, clinical evaluation and biochemical tests. Based on these the physician usually categorizes the patient into a high or low risk group. Similarly every child can be categorized into three risk groups for dental caries — high, medium and low. Since dental caries is a multi-factorial disease, the risk is calculated taking into consideration the majority of causative factors.

Many parents complain that their child does not eat many sweets but still gets lots of cavities. This is because of the multi-factorial nature of the disease. The child may be in a high caries risk group due to factors other than diet and therefore has a higher chance of getting cavities.

Target disease, not symptom

Dental caries is a “disease” and dental cavity is a “symptom/sign” of this disease. If we are only bothered about the symptom or sign of the disease, then every few months the child will develop a new dental cavity, if the child has a high risk. Therefore, it is important to target the disease to restrain development of any new dental cavities. Also, do not leave any untreated carious teeth in the mouth as a child has three times more chances of having decay in permanent teeth if she or she has untreated milk teeth.

Reduce risk

The risk can be reduced by highlighting all the risk factors in a caries risk child and targeting them specifically. Strictly follow the instructions given by your pediatric dentist for risk reduction as parents’ cooperation is desirable and essential in reducing the risk of the child.

Recall schedule

It is also important to follow the recall schedule as advised by your pediatric dentist. The frequency of recall visits may vary based on the risk of the child i.e. for a high risk child, recall visits may be more frequent and for a low risk child the recall visits may be every six months. During these recall visits various preventive aids are carried out like professional prophylaxis, fluoride application.

The writer is a dentist at Seoul Children’s Dental Center in Cheongdam-dong, southern Seoul, and has General Registration as Dentist in Australia. For further questions, send an email to the writer at keesanghong@hotmail.com, or call the hospital at (02) 515-0926, or visit the hospital’s website, https://www.seoulchildrendentalcenter.com.