Oral Health for Infants: What Pediatricians and Pediatric NeoNatal Nursing Staff Need to Know

W might surprise most healthcare providers is the fact that the most frequently encountered chronic disease of children is dental caries. It wasn’t long ago that the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) for much of their long history recommended that the child first seek dental evaluation by three years of age.1 This reflected the general belief that child behavior under three years of age rendered limited usefulness to early examinations and secondly that there were inadequate numbers of pediatric dental specialists available to see children earlier. In contrast to views of pediatric dentists, those responsible for treating extensive early childhood decay it became clear that deferral to age three for first seeing a dentist was clearly not in the best interest of children and parents. Since the formulation of the specialty of Pedodontics (today referred to as Pediatric Dentistry) recognition of the high demand for invasive repair of multiple and extensive decay among children from age 1 to three, the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD) has long advocated institution of earlier preventive measures than three years.