Dental Sealants

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Overview

Dental sealants are skinny plastic coatings that shield the chewing surfaces of kids’s again enamel from cavities, or tooth decay. As a result of they’ve small pits and grooves, these surfaces are tough and uneven. Meals and germs can get caught within the pits and grooves and keep there for a very long time as a result of toothbrush bristles can not brush them away. Sealants fill within the grooves and hold the meals out.

Kids ought to get sealants on their everlasting molars (again enamel) as quickly as they arrive in, earlier than decay assaults the enamel. The primary molars come into the mouth when youngsters are about 6 years outdated, and the second molars seem when youngsters are about 12 years outdated.

Sealants might be placed on in a dental workplace, a neighborhood dental clinic, or in a college sealant program.

Making use of sealants is easy and painless. They’re painted on as a liquid and rapidly harden to type a defend over the tooth.

Cowl picture

Seal Out Tooth Decay

Physique

Brochure for fogeys that explains dental sealants

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Useful Ideas

• Ask a dentist or physician the place your youngster can get dental sealants. Sealants might be placed on in a dentist’s workplace, a neighborhood well being clinic, and generally in school.
• Be sure your youngsters additionally brush with a fluoride toothpaste twice a day and see a dentist for normal check-ups.

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Further Sources

• Seal Out Tooth Decay [PDF – 220 KB]
  A print-friendly model of NIDCR’s Seal Out Tooth Decay publication.
• Dental Sealants Incessantly Requested Questions
  A truth sheet from the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention (CDC) that explains what sealants are, how they’re utilized, how lengthy they final, and the advantages of sealants.
• MedlinePlus: Dental Sealants
  The NIH Nationwide Library of Drugs’s assortment of hyperlinks to authorities, skilled and non-profit/voluntary organizations with data on dental sealants.

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