How Dental Sealants Protect Your Child’s Oral Health

Brushing teeth is one of the basic personal care habits parents work to instill in their children. It isn’t easy, though. Because it requires fine motor skills, experts recommend that parents stay involved until around age eight — and keep checking their kids’ work after that. 

Fortunately, there’s a tool that can make life easier for you and your child. With sealants, we can help keep their molars clean, significantly lowering their risk of cavities.

That’s why Gemini Master-Patel, DMD, and our team offer sealants as part of our family dentistry care here at Riverside Dental. With this simple but effective cavity prevention tool, which we apply at our offices in Yonkers and Thornwood, New York, we slash your child’s risk of tooth decay. 

How sealants work to prevent cavities

People of any age can get sealants, but dental experts recommend them for children in particular because childhood cavities are so common. By age eight, half of kids have a cavity. 

Sealants give you a way to lessen the likelihood that your child ends up a part of this statistic. Sealants are thin plastic linings that Dr. Master-Patel bonds to the tops of their molars. This fills in all the tiny grooves where plaque could easily get trapped. 

Sealants provide a protective layer that keeps harmful bacteria from eating into your child’s enamel, causing tooth decay. Sealants have been shown to reduce the risk of cavities in molars by as much as 80%. 

That’s why the American Dental Association (ADA) recommends sealing molars as soon as they come in (usually around age 6 for baby molars and age 12 for adult molars).

What to expect with sealants

Sealants aren’t just highly effective at preventing cavities. They’re also quick, easy, and pain-free to get. 

If you decide sealants are right for your child, they’ll relax in our dental chair while Dr. Master-Patel prepares their teeth. This just means applying a gel that helps the sealants bond better.

She then rinses and dries the teeth and applies the sealant, allowing it to settle into the grooves of the molar. Next, she uses a specialized light to cure the sealant, hardening it in place. This entire process only takes a few minutes. 

Once set, sealants can last up to five years. This means they defend your child against cavities for years, providing protection as they get older and, ideally, better at brushing and flossing their teeth. 

At each visit to our office, Dr. Master-Patel checks your child’s sealants. She can let you know when they need to be replaced. 

If you’re looking for a fast and painless way to help keep your child’s teeth healthy, sealants absolutely deliver. To learn more about this preventive measure or to schedule an appointment for your child to get sealants, call the Riverside Dental office nearest you or book your appointment online today.