In some cases, the treatment of infected milk teeth that have lost excessive substance due to caries may not be possible and they may need to be extracted. Early loss of milk teeth may occur, and appliances called space maintainers are used to protect the place of the permanent tooth that will come from below. Space maintainers prevent the neighboring teeth from moving into the extraction space, thus preventing the permanent tooth from either being impacted or coming out of a different place. Therefore, it prevents orthodontic problems such as crowding and mismatch of teeth or speech/chewing disorder that may occur in the future.
If the root formation in the permanent tooth under the prematurely lost primary tooth is past half, a space maintainer may not be needed. Again, there may be situations where your doctor does not need a space maintainer.
The space-retaining appliance should be used in the mouth until the permanent teeth come out and possible future problems should be prevented.
