SPACE MAINTAINERS

Parents of children have a common misconception that Milk teeth are temporary and will eventually "fall off" and hence no treatment should be done for milk tooth cavities. Milk teeth (Baby teeth) are designed to stay in a child’s mouth until the permanent tooth erupts. They guide the new tooth into position; hence the early loss of a milk tooth can be harmful as there can be space loss and the new teeth erupt out of alignment.

Space maintainers are devices which are fixed into the child’s mouth to retain the space previously occupied by the milk tooth till the permanent tooth erupts.

The procedure usually takes two visits, an impression of the empty space is made and sent to the lab and in the next visit the space maintainer is fixed onto the space. The device stays in place till the permanent tooth erupts into the position guided by it.