Why Does My Child Need X-Rays?

When you take your child to visit the dentist on their six month check-up it may be recommended that you have x-rays completed. While there is a small amount of radiation exposure, the benefit outweighs the harm when proper precautions are taken.  Your pediatric dentist may recommend x-rays for your children for a variety of reasons. X-rays are an electromagnetic wave of sort lengths with high energy that passes through materials opaque to light.

X-rays are used in order to see cavities between the teeth. Due to the small space between the teeth, a dentist with a naked eye would not be able to see if there are cavities developing. However, by taking an x-ray of the different areas in the mouth cavities are illuminated and treatment can occur.

If your child is in pain due to dental decay and your child needs a pulpotomy Dr. Cameron Fuller may take x-rays in order to see how deep the decay is.   And radiographs may also be recommended in order to evaluate how much space there is between teeth, whether permanent teeth are developing correctly, if wisdom teeth are impacted, or to determine the progression of bone disease.

In determining what if any orthodontic treatment your child needs also requires x-rays because the dentist will need to be able to see below the gums in order to determine how your child’s teeth are sitting in the mouth and how the teeth are erupting in the mouth.

While Pediatric dentist Dr. Fuller may recommend x-rays, he’ll take every precaution to protect your child.




Comments

  1. UnknownDecember 23, 2014 at 3:11 AM

    Thanks for your blog. I just landed up in your blog and I really appreciate your blog. It is full of resourceful information.
    Pediatric Dentist Grand Junction

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to comment. Your comment will be approved after it has been read by one of our staff.

Popular posts from this blog

What is a dental abscess?

Image
One of the most common conditions affecting children's teeth are dental abscesses.  Children with severe cavities often have teeth that abscess.  Abscess of lower left primary tooth.  NOTE the tissue swelling on the tooth. Radiograph of abscess on middle tooth.  Note the dark outline of the short root. Dental abscesses often start out as large cavities on the teeth. Once the cavity invades the pulp of the tooth the infection spreads to the bone. At that point the tooth is no longer salvageable. A dental abscess is a swelling of the tissue around an infected tooth. The following symptoms may result from a dental abscess.  Children can often present with facial swelling, fever,  altered eating habits, poor concentration, poor sleep patterns, breathing problems, and general malaise. The treatment that is always recommended is antibiotics and extraction. 
Read more

A gap between the teeth

Image
When your baby’s teeth first begin to come in and you notice that gap between their teeth when they smile, the family may coo that it’s cute. "However, it is very important that if your child has a gap in their teeth due to a maxillary frenum, or another reason, that it be corrected," says pediatric dentist Dr. Cameron Fuller. Your child’s education, speech and self-confidence is dependent upon it being corrected at an early age.             As your child gets older they are working on saying certain sounds. Children who are younger than five should be developing the ability to say all of the sounds. After five if these sounds are not solidified it will make it much more difficult for them to learn to correctly speak. “And by age seven if the sounds are not correct they run the risk of never being able to say them correctly,” says Dr. Cameron Fuller . By age five and six your child should be able to say th...
Read more

Baby teeth: What you should know.

The importance of oral health for a child is paramount.  So many aspects of a child's development depend on a healthy oral environment. At pediatric dentistry of Redlands we specialize in children's oral health, especially prevention. Here is a quick read from CNN on " Baby's teeth: What you should Know ."  
Read more