The goal of family dentistry is to ensure lifelong oral health by addressing the unique dental needs of each family member in a comfortable and familiar environment.
Family dentists are trained to handle pediatric dentistry concerns, such as cavity prevention in children, as well as adult dental issues like crowns, bridges, dentures, and cosmetic procedures. They emphasize preventive care and education to help families maintain healthy teeth and gums.
FAQs
The most important dental treatment for children is preventative care. We aim to ensure 100% prevention for our children, so the only intervention they should need in Ireland is annual dental check-ups.
However, some children may develop cavities due to processed sugars in their diets or difficulties with brushing. If intervention is necessary, it’s crucial to address any issues when lesions are small to prevent major harm. Children’s teeth are smaller, so even a small cavity can be close to the pulp or nerve.
We would encourage you at Cube Dental to bring your child to the dentist every 12 months, even if they have no apparent dental issues. Aside from prevention and check-ups, regular visits establish a good routine, ensuring they understand the importance of dental health as they move into their teenage years and adulthood. This will help them maintain good oral hygiene and dental health for the rest of their lives.
Fissure sealants are preventative treatments that are essentially little resin coatings that sit into the grooves and fissures of the permanent molars. We use them when a child’s permanent molars have erupted, so this is typically from the age of 6 1/2 upwards.
This means that sticky products and lumps of bacteria can’t sit in the fissures and cause cavities. Also, because the molar teeth are right at the back of the mouth, sometimes children struggle to clean these adequately, so it helps protect them if their cleaning isn’t quite where we need it to be.
Sometimes the sealant can be pulled out if the child eats especially sticky foods and sweets, so it’s important to check at their routine examination that these are still in place and effective.
The HSE offers some dental services for children up to the age of 16. Their advice is to bring your child to a dentist when their first tooth erupts, usually around six months old. This helps your child become comfortable with dental visits, allows us to provide hygiene education and instruction, and enables us to monitor any concerns. We typically recommend annual check-ups unless there’s a specific need to see them sooner.
The HSE offers a free dental appointment to all children in certain classes, usually First Class when the child is eight years old. Outside this check, there is no other regular routine treatment provided by the HSE. You can attend the local HSE dental clinic for emergency treatment for children under 16.
If a child isn’t seen until the HSE appointment and there is an issue with decay, it can be fairly severe at that point. It’s very important that parents understand that their child’s first dental visit should not be the free HSE appointment. As the HSE states on their website, it is important for patients to bring their child to the dentist from the age when their teeth first start to erupt.
Our recommendation would be to bring your child to your family dentist. You already have a rapport with the dentist and the staff, who know and understand your own unique dental needs. Sometimes, genetic components can be passed down to children, so this is important to consider.
For ease of management and attending regularly for checkups and scale and polishes, it also makes sense to attend the one clinic.
