When you say that you are visiting "my kids dentist," you do so with a sense of trust that this pediatric dentistry professional will take great care of your children. We have worked hard to earn the title of “my kid’s dentist,” and to keep your trust. Part of this for pediatric dentistry is being able to treat a child quickly and efficiently when they are in a situation that is causing them pain or discomfort. Over the years, we have developed an ideology of holistic dental medicine, which focuses on many different treatment options, making sure we find the one that will work the most effectively and sometimes, the most quickly to help your child. Dental discomfort can be excruciating even for adults, so the last thing we want is for it to stick around for any length of time, causing your child distress. Perhaps the greatest tool we have in our belt to fight discomfort, often caused by infections, are antibiotics. Antibiotics were discovered in 1928 with the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming. They have completely changed the way we consider infections and how we fight them. Considering that most any infection that would affect your child in the realm of dentistry is likely to be caused by bacteria, antibiotics are a critical part of our treatment regime.
There are a couple of things to remember about antibiotics, however. First, they are not a cure-all, which is what many people tend to treat them as. We can certainly appreciate how a parent could see these medications as a wonder drug. A child with a severe infection will be in pain, and antibiotics will work to permanently relieve this pain. The child may have some swelling at the site of the infection, which will also be tender to the touch. Antibiotics can, and will, reduce this swelling. Finally, a child may even have a fever that antibiotics can take away. Essentially, the antibiotics prescribed by "my kids dentist" are effective in controlling all aspects of the infection, because that is what they are designed to do.
On the other hand, you must trust the person you call "my kids dentist" to provide your child with a complete range of options that include, but are not exclusive to, antibiotics. Pediatric dentistry knows that there is an inherent risk of overusing antibiotics, because it has already happened in numerous places. The result of over-prescribing antibiotics has been the rise in cases where the organisms are resistant to the antibiotics and more severe measures have had to be taken. We do not want this. As the person trusted to be "my kid’s dentist" and a pediatric dentistry professional, our goal is to use the medication in a sparing, but highly targeted manner. This means that when we prescribe a dose of antibiotics, it will be limited, but highly effective, so balance can be restored and your child’s body can use its own antibodies to remove and kill any traces of the infection.