Importance Of Pediatric Dentistry

Nature is the source of all true Knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity. -Leonardo Da Vinci Despite modern advances in prevention of dental caries, many teeth are lost prematurely in children. Primary teeth are a guide for the eruption of permanent dentition and are an important contributing factor for development of jaws, chewing process and growth of the child. Premature loss of teeth can produce problems in the eruption of succedaneous teeth, phonetic disturbances, and harmful oral habits like tongue thrusting.1 One of the primary objectives of Pediatric dentistry is to preserve the health and integrity of primary teeth until they naturally

Due to these reasons, much importance is given to chemical cleaning and disinfection of canals as opposed to thorough mechanical shaping of the canals. The pathway of progression of the infection and the ecology of infecting microorganisms are different in the deciduous dentition as compared to the permanent dentition.5

Hence, for complete elimination of infection irrigation is an important step for the success of pulpectomy.3

Studies have demonstrated that despite the use of antimicrobial agents, microorganisms such as Enterococcus faecalis, Prevotella intermedia and Porphyromonas gingivalis persists in the root canal of the primary teeth. Therefore, an ideal irrigating solution should provide mechanical flushing, be bactericidal, and dissolve the remnants of the organic tissue without damaging the periodontium. It must be biocompatible and nontoxic both locally and

2 It was developed in the late 1940s in the research laboratories of Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd. (Macclesfield, England). Aqueous solutions of 0.1% to 0.2% have been used for plaque removal purpose, while 2% is the concentration of root canal irrigants usually found in the endodontic literature.6 Ruiz-Esparza et al.10 reported that 2% chlorhexidine (CHX) showed a greater reduction of intracanal bacterial loading and suggested that this irrigating solution is an alternative for pulpectomy treatment of necrotic primary teeth. But it may be cautioned here that chlorhexidine is unable to dissolve necrotic tissue remnants and it is less effective against gram negative bacteria which predominate the primary endodontic infections. Also, the constant increase in antibiotic resistance and side effects caused by the synthetic agents, has led to search for other natural