Gingivitis, or gum disease, is an oral disease which causes inflammation and bleeding of your gums. Although this pathology is usually related to adults, the truth is that gingivitis can also affect children. Therefore, we will see how this disease affects children and how to prevent it.
Gingivitis, or gum disease, is an oral disease which causes inflammation and bleeding of your gums. Although this pathology is usually related to adults, the truth is that gingivitis can also affect children.
Therefore, we will see how this disease affects children and how to prevent it.
Gingivitis is a disease that derives from a deficient oral hygiene. Such insufficient hygiene may be due to people not brushing as often as they should -after every meal-, or if they really do so, they are not following the proper technique.
This lack of hygiene makes food debris accumulate in the mouth leading to dental plaque. The chronic accumulation of dental plaque, in turn, promotes tartar buildup. And, along with it begins all the symptoms of gingivitis disease: gum inflammation and bleeding.
Provided that gingivitis disease is the same for adults and children alike, both experience similar symptoms. The only difference is children’s lack of knowledge that makes them incapable of realizing and communicating them. Therefore, parents have an essential role to teach kids the correct technique to brush their teeth as well as to incorporate good habits of oral hygiene.
In order to detect the warning signs, we recommend the following:
-To supervise brushing regularly: if we pay attention when children rinse their mouths, we may be able to notice possible bleeding.
-To observe if there’s bleeding when eating: one of the best examples is the one with apples. If your child eats an apple and you see slight bleeding on the fruit, he may have gingivitis.
- To pay attention to gum’s color and thickness of your child: healthy gums are pink and there’s no inflammation. Swollen and bright red gums are signs of gingivitis.
Visit a pediatric dentist
Just as we need to improve our brushing routine from the moment we spot the symptoms, it’s equally important to consult a pediatric dentist twice a year.
In this way, the specialist would be able to determine which is the most suitable way to treat gingivitis: by performing a professional dental cleaning in the clinic or simply by maximizing hygiene measures at home.
In our offices, we have a child specialist with years of experience, during her residency, she received advanced training to deal with dental emergencies in kids, to treat kids in a hospital in the operating room using general anesthesia, to perform oral sedation dentistry in the office and to analyze oral growth and development. She loved working with kids and their families, providing oral health education and care.
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