Fluoride Varnish: Essential Information for Parents about Fluoride Treatment
Healthy teeth and gums are elementary for your child’s overall health. Your child’s dentist will discuss good dental habits for your kid even before their first tooth erupts. After the first tooth’s emergence, the dentist might recommend your child receive fluoride warmish therapy in the dental office to help prevent tooth decay. Your child can receive these treatments two to four times every year. How many treatments your child needs depends on the likelihood of the child developing cavities.
Take your child to the kid’s dentist in Phoenix, AZ, from age one. As the American Academy of Pediatrics suggests, the dentists at the facility will apply the varnish to your child’s teeth in the dental office.
How Does Fluoride Treatment Help Children?
Fluoride treatment is a dental therapy that helps prevent tooth decay, slow it, or inhibit it from worsening. The treatment comprises fluoride, a mineral that helps strengthen the tooth enamel, the hard outer surface of the tooth.
Fluoride therapy doesn’t entirely prevent cavities. However, the treatment best helps prevent decay in children if they brush using the appropriate amount of fluoride toothpaste, floss daily, have a healthy diet, and get regular dental care.
The Safety of Fluoride Therapy
Fluoride therapy is safe and provided by the pediatric dentist in Phoenix, AZ, to prevent tooth decay in children. After an application, the fluoride hardens quickly, and because tiny amounts are used, no fluoride is swallowed. The fluoride is comfortably brushed off after four to 12 hours.
Some brands of varnish make children’s teeth appear yellow. However, your child’s teeth return to normal after brushing off the fluoride, and most children like its taste.
The Fluoride Application Process
The fluoride varnish application process is straightforward and painless. It is painted on the tops and sides of children’s teeth with a tiny brush. The varnish is sticky but hardens soon after coming in contact with saliva. Your child will feel the hard varnish with their tongue but licking it off is challenging.
Although the application process is painless, children might cry before or during the application. Thankfully painting the varnish requires merely a few minutes, and crying children make it easier for the dentist to complete the procedure quickly because their mouths remain slightly open. You might receive a request to hold your child in your lap while sitting knee to knee with the dentist applying the varnish.
Caring for Your Child’s Teeth after Fluoride Application
Your child can start eating and drinking soon after receiving the application of fluoride. However, you must give your child soft foods and cold for warm foods and beverages.
Refrain from brushing or flossing your child’s teeth for about four to six hours after they receive the treatment. The pediatric dentist might suggest waiting until the following morning to brush and floss. If your child knows how to spit, remind them to spit after rinsing.
After getting fluoride therapy for children, you must ensure they follow good dental health practices like brushing twice daily, flossing once, getting sufficient fluoride from topical sources, eating a healthy diet, and getting regular Care from a pediatric dentist with the training to treat young children.
Children must receive oral health risk assessments by six months of age, suggests the American Academy of Pediatrics. Children at a higher risk of dental caries need referrals to a pediatric dentist by six months of age and not beyond six months after the first tooth eruption. The suggestions are to ensure every child has a dental home by 12 months.
Fluoride therapy is an excellent solution to strengthen enamel and helps prevent oral infections. However, the treatment doesn’t prevent infections by itself but requires help from patients who must maintain excellent dental hygiene and receive six monthly dental prophylaxis to eliminate plaque and tartar and treat any conditions manifesting in their mouths even after receiving fluoride therapy.
Children consuming a healthy diet and drinking fluoridated water, besides using fluoride toothpaste, receive the fluoride they need for healthy teeth. While it is unnecessary to monitor fluoride from water consumption, parents must ensure children do not swallow fluoride toothpaste or rinse containing concentrated fluoride because it can cause fluorosis.
Children can become vulnerable to tooth decay despite getting fluoride treatments because they are sneaky and can ingest foods and drinks harmful to the teeth. Therefore parents must supervise children’s diet and their dental hygiene practices until seven or eight when children can care for their teeth without help from parents.
Desert Ridge Pediatric Dentistry provides fluoride therapy to children to strengthen tooth enamel. If your child hasn’t received this excellent treatment, kindly arrange a meeting with the practice to benefit your child’s oral health.