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Factors of Developing Feeding Bottle Tooth Decay
Children getting inappropriate feeding may lead to distinctive nursing
cultured tooth decay, prominently termed as Feeding container Tooth decay.
Other terminologies used are caries caused by nursing container, infant
caries, early childhood caries etc.
Such tooth decay
is a disturbing menace among young people, parents and the dentist attending
on them. Generally, water and other fluoride applications have yielded
in curbing the caries from spreading with BBTD persisting as decay factor
deserving special attention.
Primitive detection besides involvement is vital to victorious management
to prevent disease from progressing.
Caries is an ailment of infectious in nature and the factors governing
them are
• Presence of teeth
• Prevalence of bacteria
• Presence of a substrate (bacterial food]
• Caries needs time to show up
The combination of these features leads to illness and absence of one
or more will not illness.
Teeth
Primary teeth normally erupt in the life’s first year, around six months
when the lower central teeth follow the upper one. Usually at a year,
all lower and upper teeth erupt. The time to erupt is varies ranging to
even six months.
Bacteria
An important bacterium in dental caries is streptococcus mutants. S. mutants
do not show up in the oral hollow space in infants till the tooth erupts.
S. mutants itself will not hold to the teeth well and hence requires other
plaque creating bacteria for basic colonization. Infants are prone to
get infected through their parents or other individuals having close contacts
with mother as the principal source. Infants’ mothers holding escalated
levels of s. mutants in their saliva become more occupied compared to
those with low levels. Caries requires minimum infective dose to erupt.
Virus deterrence should be initiated by parents as preventive therapy.
Having all bad teeth reflects having similar bacteria.
Substrate
The enzyme for s. mutants comes off milk, juice or any sweet liquid containing
fermentable carbohydrates. In’70s and ‘80s, commercial sugar teas guided
to extensive infant caries in Germany. Parents in UK resorted to enhance
the viscosity of vitamin syrups by coating with honey or sugar syrup for
ensuring long feeding. Honey coated pacifier is yet another bad habit.
As honey is connected with infantile botulism, it is advisable to avoid
the same during life’s first year. The botulism spores are found in commercial
corn syrups. It was recently observed in U.S feeding bottles to be labeled
with soda labels and astonishingly, even children were found with soda-filled
bottles.
Time
To enable demineralization and caries development, bacteria and substrate
requires to prevail for a long time. The bottle at sleeping time or while
in the bed is very harmful as liquids will puddle surrounding the incisors
for longtime and the teeth are basically affected by maxillary teeth.
Lower incisors generally get less affected due to being shielded by the
tongue.
Nursing pattern decay has also been the cause promoted by prolonged or
unrestricted night time breast feeding. The milk stagnated around the
neck of frontal teeth with subsequent fermentation of the disaccharide
lactose besides sugar found in milk promotes caries. Bottle or breast
feeding do not influence the caries under normal feeding routine.
A usual lofty risk child will use bottle to get fed well past the first
year. If infants are allowed prolonged use of bottle, the habit especially
during crisis cannot be stopped abruptly. Such children invariably have
low appropriate caloric intake and thus high liquid intake may result the
children to be away from other nutritional foods, thus ending up with malnutrition.
Ablactating off the breast or bottle feeding can become highly challenging.
This can be overcome by conversion to the cup as early as possible preferably
before or immediately after the first birthday. Infants develop muscle control
to close the mouth when they can be put on cereals besides shifting over
to cups for taking liquid foods.
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