Children

At Deer Valley Dental Care we want to make every visit to the dentist fun for your children, because their early impressions of all their experiences will last for a lifetime. So we strive to create a comfortable dental environment that they can trust! We have even installed a Nintendo station so they can play while they wait.

We have many approaches to your child's dental growth and development. Deer Valley Dental Care's goal is to head off any potential oral health problems before they occur. Through routine check-ups, we want to ensure that their teeth and gums stay healthy all through their formative years.

Usually we see your children when they reach 3 years of age unless you see something that concerns you before that time. At age 3, the first experience is designed to be very easy and fun; we give them a ride in the chair and a prize for being a good helper. We may or may not even look at their teeth. If they are ready and co-operative, we will, but we don't force anything. Usually we find that if they go away with a positive experience they won't be afraid to let us look next time.

Sealants

At Deer Valley Dental Care our primary goal with children is to use preventive techniques to eliminate problems before they occur. One of the best examples of this is sealing children's teeth. Most of us have fillings on the top surface of our back teeth because the deep grooves of the back teeth are difficult to clean. This part of the mouth is by far the most susceptible area to decay. A sealant fills in the deep grooves so they are easy to clean. Like most things, sealants have changed over the years. In the past, we simply painted a plastic covering over the deep grooves of the teeth. The shortcoming with that method is that there usually is already plaque or small areas of decay in the groove of the tooth. The sealant won't stick to those areas and falls out, then decay progresses .

What Deer Valley Dental Care does now is use microabrasion to thoroughly clean out the groove of any plaque or decay. This is done without freezing or drilling by using an air spray with abrasive particles. Then we seal the top of the tooth with bonding and a thin layer of permanent filling material. This type of sealant is extremely durable and lasts for years. In many cases, it never needs to be redone.

This is probably the single most beneficial procedure we do. If your child never gets a cavity, they will never have their old fillings crack and require crowns and/or root canals like most adults. (To see how adults can avoid the problem of teeth cracking, once they already are filled see our Ceramic Dentistry page)