When working as a health care professional, you come across many different patients and various situations. You learn some fascinating and new things from each and every last patient case that you have. I am going to share one of my patient cases with you.
I had a 7 year old, female patient, that presented to the clinic with a common eruption pattern. A patient’s eruption pattern is how their primary and permanent teeth grow or erupt from their gums or gingiva. Children have a set of teeth which most people know as baby teeth, or primary teeth, which usually start to erupt at 4-6 months of age. These teeth begin to shed at the age of 6 and then the permanent teeth grow into place. My 7 year old patient presented with two rows of teeth. Her primary teeth were in it’s usual row and her permanent anterior teeth had began to erupt right behind them, as seen in the picture below.
The patient also had no primary spaces, which are spaces for the permanent teeth to erupt into, on her lower jaw. The patient has had many consultations with doctors and has also received advice on whether or not her primary teeth should be extracted. One doctor advised for the patient’s mother to just leave the teeth alone and let them have a normal eruption pattern.
The 7 year old had some difficulty keeping the teeth clean due to their position and therefore had some light mineralized plaque deposits, known as calculus, above her gingival line. This calculus led to the irritation and inflammation of the patient’s gums. I did some scaling and light irrigation, as well as polishing to the patient’s teeth, to relieve the inflammation and improve her overall oral health. I also reviewed home care with the patient to ensure that calculus would not build up and cause any problems to both her permanent and primary teeth.
One of the clinic faculty recommended that a Panoramic or full mouth radiograph be taken to monitor the patient’s eruption pattern and ensure that their were no missing or impacted teeth. The radiograph, as seen below, shows that all of the patients teeth are healthy and will have a normal eruption pattern.
