How can caries be detected in a milk tooth?
A caries in milk teeth can spread much faster than in permanent teeth due to the structural differences of milk teeth. The thinned and softer enamel layer and the reduced mineral content make the milk tooth more susceptible to caries. In the early stages of this disease, white to yellowish, often punctiform indentations can be seen in the uppermost enamel layer.
The tooth becomes rough in the affected area. Since parents often cannot detect these early stages of caries, children are usually late for the dentist and very advanced caries lesions (such as in the Nursing Bottle Syndrome) develop quickly. By constantly drinking sweetened liquids through the teat bottle, the front teeth are so badly damaged by caries that only black stumps of the teeth remain, which have to be extracted.
Dental treatment is usually very stressful for small children, which is why there are specially trained pediatric dentists. Their aim is to save the child a long and painful treatment by using alternative anaesthetic methods, such as laughing gas, so that no dental phobia develops. In general, parents should regularly look into the child’s oral cavity and check its oral hygiene to detect changes as soon as possible, so that caries is not only noticed in an advanced state.
Recognizing caries in the X-ray image
Caries can be diagnosed by X-ray examination. The different density and thickness of the tissue types influences the absorption capacity for X-rays. Enamel is denser than dentin and appears whiter in the X-ray image.If the tooth now has a carious lesion, this changes the density of the hard tooth substance at this point, making it appear different from the rest of the tooth in the X-ray image.
Since the caries decomposes the hard tooth substance, the lesions appear dark to completely black in the X-ray film. The density at this point is lower than before. This makes it easy to assess how deep and large the caries is and how it can be treated.
