Mid-Continent Dental Congress - Greater St. Louis Dental Society Conference for Continuing Education

CE Credits: 3 Hour Lecture |  Subject: Pediatric Dentistry |  Recommended for: All Attendees

Dentistry for Children is fun, varied, simple yet complicated, challenging, rewarding, and very very important. No short lecture on pediatric dentistry can cover all the things which comprise this specialty, but this presentation hopes to focus on the things that a dentist will come in contact with the active child. The most in-depth focus will be on dental trauma and sports-related items.

The presentation is organized by age dealing with dental activities that highlight different age groups. The four basic age groups and the topics to be covered are; infants, age 0-2 (feeding, frenal attachments, nonnutritive sucking, and primary tooth trauma); Ages 3-5 or preschoolers (Behavior management for in-office restorative treatment, sedation, and the new dental paradigms of caries treatment including minimally invasive techniques such as the use of Silver Diamine Fluoride and the Hall technique), Ages 6-12, Elementary school age (permanent tooth dental trauma, early intervention orthodontics), Ages 13-18, Adolescents and high schoolers. (sports injury prevention and athletic mouth guards, poor choices available to adolescents such as smoking, vaping, and the use of sugar-sweetened beverages).

Active kids are healthy kids and oral health is a part of total health. But understanding the world of the child is challenging and putting it in the perspective of how children stay active is useful to treating them successfully and enjoyably. This will be as evidence-based as possible and almost all of the examples and cases were treated and photographed by Dr. Mills himself. These will be real-life examples that all of the attendees can envision seeing in their own daily practices.

Learning Objectives:

• Understanding the infant’s oral health needs.
• Become familiar with modern sedation guidelines for the child patient.
• Become familiar with laser frenulectomies.
• Familiarize yourself with current Primary tooth trauma guidelines.
• Understand the concept of minimally invasive dentistry for the child patient.
• Learn the details of the 2020 IADT guidelines for permanent tooth injuries.
• Understand the basic concepts of sports dentistry and how to prevent dental injuries in sports.
• Learn about the modern athletic mouthguard.
• Familiarize yourself with the ideas of tobacco use, vaping, sugar-sweetened beverages of all types, and oral health.
• Put the dental life of a child in the context of their age and abilities.

About the Speaker:

Stephen Mills, DDS is a Board Certified Pediatric Dentist and practices in Scarborough, Maine. He completed his DDS Degree at the SUNY at Buffalo School of Dentistry in 1981. After three years on active duty in the US Army, he obtained his certificate in Pediatric Dentistry at the Department of Pediatric Dentistry of the University of Connecticut in 1987 and achieved board certification in Pediatric Dentistry in 1995. Dr. Mills’ current activities center on his interest in sports-related orofacial injury treatment and prevention and his involvement with the Academy for Sports Dentistry (ASD). He lectures widely on Sports Dentistry and Athletic Mouthguards and serves as a team dentist for the University of New England. Dr. Mills serves on the Board of Directors of the Partnership for Children’s Oral Health for the State of Maine. Financial Relationship – none reported.