Keep in mind that just watching it, may mean watching it get bigger and more difficult to treat! Despite all the advances in dentistry and the hi tech tools sometimes diagnosis is still done by intuition and previous experience.
Take a look at today's dilemma...here is a tooth on someone who never had a cavity...while examining her I found that this molar had a defect in the enamel which was very suspicious...
I was actually able to place a pointed instrument called an explorer into this defect and feel that there was soft tooth structure at the bottom of this pit. So I decided to treat this defect.
Without any anesthetic I was able to take a tiny dental drill and sink a tiny hole into this defect which after a few seconds yielded nice clean healthy tooth structure. See the following photo to see how small the drilled area actually is...
The defect luckily had not yet penetrated through the enamel and I was able to bond a tiny little tooth colored filling into this shallow depression.
This tooth will probably retain this filling for many many years to come...and furthermore, I am sure that had I left this untreated, the defect would have continued to grow and the restoration would have been a much larger project.
The patient who had never previously had a cavity was thrilled that this was done with so little effort and no anesthetic...the entire procedure took about 5 minutes.
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