Can Dental Sealant Help with Sensitive Teeth?

Can Dental Sealant Help with Sensitive Teeth?

Jan 11, 2023

Although brushing and flossing your teeth helps to remove food residue particles and dental plaque from teeth surfaces, they sometimes fail to reach all the crannies at the back of your teeth. Dental sealants help to protect such vulnerable areas against decay by sealing food and plaque out.

A tooth sealant is a customized thin coating made of plastic that is painted on your tooth’s chewing surface, usually a premolar or a molar, to fight against tooth decay. Once your sealant is applied, it quickly bonds to the grooves and depressions on teeth surfaces to form a protective shield around the tooth’s enamel.

Who Should Get Sealants?

Teenagers and children often make perfect candidates for dental sealants because they are more likely to develop decay in their dental grooves and depressions. This occurs mostly on the teeth at the back of the mouth, the premolars, and the molars.

Dental experts recommend that you take your child to a dentist to get sealants on their permanent teeth as soon as they erupt. Doing so will help protect your kid’s teeth against cavities through their cavity-prone years, usually between the ages of 6 and 14.

Dental Sealants Procedure

A tooth sealant is a non-invasive preventive dentistry treatment and does not take much time for the dentist to apply. A better understanding of the sealant application procedure will help you feel confident and comfortable during the process. Here is a guide with an overview of what you should expect when you visit Kensington Dental Clinic to get dental sealants in Edmonton.

  1. Cleaning the tooth

The tooth surface needs to be clean for the sealant to bond properly with your tooth. Your dental practitioner will fix a small cleaning brush in a dental drill, which will scrub and clean out your tooth’s surface and grooves as the drill spins.

If your dental grooves still harbour debris after cleaning, your dentist may take other steps, such as the air-abrasion technique or enameloplasty. Air-abrasion technique involves using a mini-sandblaster to painlessly clean out your grooves, while in enameloplasty, the dentist will use a dental drill to remove the remaining debris by slightly trimming the enamel. No anesthesia is needed.

  1. Conditioning your tooth’s surface

After a successful cleaning, our dentist in Alberta T5L 3P9 will apply etching gel over your teeth surface in preparation for the placement of the sealant. The etching gel is applied and spread beyond your tooth’s grooves and allowed to sit for around 20 to 60 seconds before it is washed off.

Tooth etchant products are acidic, so if some happen to get on your tongue, it would taste sour or bitter but wouldn’t hurt. Its acidic nature is an added benefit because it kills bacteria lying at the bottom of your tooth grooves getting sealed. An etched enamel will have an appearance resembling frosted glass.

  1. Etching step evaluation

After thoroughly washing your tooth, your dentist will blow your tooth dry using an air syringe and then evaluate your tooth. Your treated tooth should look frosty, dull, and white. You should note that once the tooth’s surface is conditioned, it must remain dry for the rest of the process. If any saliva contamination is to occur, your tooth needs to be re-etched.

  1. Sealant application

While your tooth is dry, a sealant is applied to the dental grooves using a small brush or, at times, a mini syringe that squirts out the liquid plastic. The sealant’s liquid nature allows it to flow into the groove’s crannies.

  1. Curing the tooth sealant

After the liquid sealant is properly positioned, a dental device similar to a wand/flashlight shines a blue light that cures it in around 60 seconds.

  1. Sealant evaluation

Once your dentist completes the curing process, your sealant should be fully hard and ready for use. The dental expert will evaluate your sealant to check that all the grooves have sufficiently been filled. How your other teeth fit against the tooth with the sealant will also be checked to ensure your teeth close together normally.

How Can Dental Sealants Help with Sensitive Teeth?

Getting sealants from a dentist near you will help alleviate sensitive teeth since they provide an additional outer protective layer that prevents extreme temperatures and acids from reaching the sensitive teeth.

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