Dental Decay

Hello,

I am Dr. Rahul Today I'm going to talk a little bit about dental decay which unfortunately is one of the most ignored things by the patient so basically this dental decay affects our teeth at three different levels. First level is when it is just superficial confined within the outer surface of the tooth, it is ignored at this stage why? because patient never experiences any kind of pain or sensitivity because our enamel does not have any nerves. If a patient visits a dentist routinely, these superficial cavities would be detected and they can be treated by a normal dental filling.

However, if it is ignored the decay can advance to the next level, which is grade 2 and the cavity then enters the second layer of the tooth which is the dentin. Now this dentin, the second layer has got nerve endings so the patient can experience pain or not pain really but he can experience sensitivity, if it is still ignored it would advance to the next level and it would enter the nerve or pulp as we call it. Once it enters the pulp then the patient would experience extreme sensitivity or extreme pain. During this period the patient has to visit a dentist and now the dentist cannot do a filling in that particular tooth why? because it has crossed that level. Now this infection needs to be treated by doing a root canal treatment.

If in certain cases, if the patient still you know because of more phobia or fear of going to a dental clinic or a dentist, if he still tends to take some medicines and ignore it then the cavity would destroy the tooth completely and then the patient has to have an extraction. So now the treatment becomes more expensive and extensive as well, now multiple visits would be required, the expense of having implants or bridges or some other treatment modality comes into the picture and that is why it is very important to visit a dentist once in six months, have a checkup, have a basic cleanup, so that if there is any problem it can be treated at a basic level rather than it getting bigger and you have to have more or something major treatment done. If you are looking for any kind of dental services or you are looking for a routine checkup, you can find us on lybrate.

Thank you