Space Maintainer

You might not be concerned if your child loses a baby tooth too soon as a result of oral trauma, decay, or extraction. Why deal with a baby tooth that falls out too soon when your child's baby teeth will ultimately be replaced by permanent teeth? Indeed, your child will ultimately have a permanent tooth sprout in the gap left by a missing baby tooth, but it's also true that losing a baby tooth too soon might interfere with the eruption of the permanent tooth. For this reason, a space maintainer may be suggested by your child's paediatric dentist. An oral device called a space maintainer is designed to "maintain" the space left by a lost baby tooth. They are typically composed of metal or acrylic and are either permanent or removable attached to the mouth.

While detachable space maintainers may even have an artificial tooth attached, fixed space maintainers are anchored into the mouth using dental cement. Their primary purpose is to stop neighbouring teeth from moving into the gap caused by early infant tooth loss. The space maintainer will be taken out once the permanent tooth starts to erupt because it has served its job.