Dental caries (cavities) and traumatic injury are the main reasons for a tooth to require pulp therapy. Pulp therapy is often referred to as a nerve treatment, children’s root canal, pulpectomy or pulpotomy.
The pulp of a tooth is the inner, central core of the tooth. The pulp contains nerves, blood vessels, connective tissue and reparative cells. The purpose of pulp therapy in Pediatric Dentistry is to maintain the vitality of the affected tooth (so the tooth is not lost.)
Many teeth are still lost prematurely even though we know the importance of the teeth and above all we have various techniques to save them. The primary objective of pulp treatment of an affected tooth is to maintain the integrity and health of oral tissues. Primary teeth that are the baby teeth are replaced by the adult teeth so people do not take them seriously. But the baby teeth are very important. If they are lost prematurely like they are lost before their normal shedding time they can cause lot of problems. The child will have difficulty in chewing the food and it will have adverse effect on his or her general growth and development. The psychological trauma is there to the child. Child has the speech problem. The baby teeth maintain the arch integrity and maintain the space for the eruption of the permanent teeth or the adult teeth but if the baby teeth are lost before the time the space will be lost and the adult teeth will not erupt in their normal position. It can also cause the development of certain abnormal tongue positions. So, maximum attempts are made to preserve primary teeth in a healthy state until normal exfoliation of teeth occurs.