Do cavities in baby teeth need fillings?

Cavities are a clue to an ongoing decaying process of your child’s teeth. This means when left untreated, the cavities will continue to enlarge. Depending on your child’s age, these teeth may stay in his mouth for anywhere between 6-10 more years. In other words, although baby teeth do eventually fall out, it takes a while before they do. 6-10 years is a long time for the decay process to eat away at your child’s teeth, leaving significant sized holes.

As cavities progress, children experience difficulty chewing and pain eating. Teeth can get infected and cause fever and swelling of your child’s face. We now know cavities can cause a significant poorer quality of life and these kids tend to have poorer weight gain than their cavity-free peers. These children also have more missed school days due to cavity-related issues and have more trouble paying attention in school. (Just ask anyone who has had a toothache before!)

Tooth decay in baby teeth can also lead to tooth decay in the upcoming adult teeth. Read here to find out how: Does tooth decay in baby teeth affect adult teeth?

There are certainly many good reasons to fix cavities even if they are in baby teeth. Please do consider returning to your child’s dentist to manage them and help your child regain a healthy mouth again!

Hi there!

The only time one may consider not to fill a cavity is when the tooth is rendered poor or hopeless meaning that it's not worth saving. So with that rule, we should always try to arrest the decay activity of any cavities. Arresting the decay activity could be having fillings done or could even be as simple as close monitoring at home and with the dentist with an improvement of oral and dietary habits.

That being said, adult teeth eruption occurs as early as 4.5 years old to as late as 15 years old. If the tooth shows signs of mobility or shedding, one may discuss with their dentist the option of leaving the cavity alone.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Kenneth