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NANTICOKE —Three-year-old Samantha Draus didn’t get very good news for her first visit in a dental chair. The tot had four cavities.
While her mother Sandra Draus was surprised by the prognosis, she was happy that the little girl didn’t cry. That could be because she was having too much fun.
First, Samantha got to sit in a room decorated with Sponge Bob photos and stickers on the wall. Then she got to watch a cartoon as well as see images of her own little teeth on a special monitor. This was all while wearing special “sunglasses” which blocked off the glearing light of the dental equipment.
When the visit was over, the Bloomsburg girl received a colorful balloon with a picture of a tooth, a coloring book and a goodie bag full of freebies like a toothbrush and toothpaste.
Samantha and other children, ages 3 to 16, were the guests at a Kids’ Cavity Prevention Day, sponsored by the Luzerne County Community College Dental Department and the Northeast Pennsylvania Dental Hygiene Association. It was held at the college’s Benco Dental Clinic at the Francis S. and Mary Gill Carrozza, R.N. Health Sciences Center in downtown Nanticoke.
“I was surprised,” Draus said. “I thought she had one cavity, but I didn’t expect any more. She really doesn’t like to brush her teeth.”
Although the news wasn’t good, her mother was happy to learn how to prevent more cavities in the future. “The problem I think is that she brushes too fast,” Draus said, taking a mini egg timer out of the bag full of free samples. “She’s supposed to brush at least two minutes so I think this will help us.”
Dental hygiene professor Julie Cleary wasn’t surprised at the result of many of the checkups. Little Samantha wasn’t the only child to walk away with a mouthful of cavities. She attributes this to an increase in the amount of sweets being eaten, the lack of fluoride in the diet due to consumption of bottled over tap water and the underuse of sealants to cover the groves and fissures in the tooth.
“Children aren’t getting the preventive care that they need,” she said. “First of all, they need to start young. Parents shouldn’t wait until their children are toddlers before scheduling their first dental appointment. You should be in a dental chair when you get your first tooth, roughly at six months old.”
The next step is trying to alleviate the fear of the dentist that they could be picking up from their older siblings and adults, Cleary said.
That’s why LCCC makes the day fun for children as well as educational.
“I always tell my dental students that ‘children are like wet cement because what they hear and feel makes an impression on them,”’ Cleary said. “And once they start crying, you really lose them.”
That advice wasn’t lost on second year dental hygiene student Caryn Cave, sporting a purple furry hat. While cleaning the mouth of a 9-year-old boy, she referred to the plaque and bacteria in his mouth as “the bad guys” as he laughed. “That’s one thing I learned when working on a child is not to use the high-tech dental terms they don’t understand,” Cave said. “It makes it fun to take the knowledge that you learn from the classroom and put it into a language that kids will understand.”
This was her second year to participate in the 10-year-old event.
The program included dental exams, sealants, dental x-rays, oral hygiene instruction and fluoride treatments. Table clinics were on display providing dental health information for parents and children.
Children were shown how to gently brush their teeth while their teeth were counted and even named.
Joyceline Laurent of Wilkes-Barre was surprised to learn that her children Lily, 7; Ian, 9, and Edyn, 12, could use foods like celery, apples and cheese as “natural toothbrushes” to maintain healthy teeth on the go when brushing isn’t possible.