Pediatric Dentistry
A visit to the pediatric dentist should be fun! Children love new experiences when they are not associated with fears, stress or even pressure in advance. Most treatments today are painless and short anyway.
Your child is in the best hands at the Kureck practice: Our pediatric dentists have many years of experience in pediatric dentistry. They take their time, explain every step in a child-friendly way and use playful distractions — such as hand puppets and a video monitor on the ceiling — to ensure an all-round relaxed treatment experience.
Gela
from Schutzbar
Christof
Riffel
Pediatric dentist Gela von Schutzbar joins our team in January 2026. Her specialties include relaxation and sedation techniques, treatment with laughing gas — safe and anxiety-free, if necessary also under general anaesthetic, treatment with milk tooth crowns for severely damaged teeth and the treatment of MIH teeth (“chalk teeth”) using gentle methods. When treating children with special challenges, Ms. von Schutzbar relies on her many years of experience and her pronounced empathy.
After many years as a popular and successful pediatric dentist, Christof Riffel will retire in February 2026.
For you as parents, we have some tips on this page on how to prepare your child for the dentist visit – whereby less is really more…
The First Time at the Dentist
To prepare your child for their first visit to the dentist, it is best to do as little as possible. The child should have their own unbiased experiences with the practice rooms and the friendly team. Do not reassure them about anything (“it won’t hurt at all”), because that only makes the child think that something might actually hurt here. If the child asks if it hurts, say that most children say it tickles a little.
Above all, do not promise any rewards, because that dramatizes the situation and puts the child under pressure.
Speak positively about your own dental experiences. (You get super teeth from it and the dentist makes sure they stay that way.) The child should be proud of their great teeth and look forward to the experience (“it’s fun, all your teeth are counted there.”)
You are welcome to be present during the treatment. But stay in the background as much as possible and let the child be the center of attention. The child should concentrate on the dentist in peace and understand what he is saying. The way Christof Riffel speaks to your child already calms and relaxes them and, if necessary, puts them in a light trance (dental hypnosis).
Children’s Prophylaxis
Brushing Teeth
Is brushing your teeth necessary? Yes. Because a clean tooth does not get sick!
When brushing your teeth, not only food residues are removed, but above all the harmful plaque. Plaque consists mainly of bacteria and its metabolic products. The bacteria multiply rapidly, attach themselves to the teeth as a sticky mass and produce aggressive acids. These dissolve the tooth enamel, so that caries develops.
Dental Floss
… is not necessary for baby teeth, is it? Yes! In many children, the teeth are very close together. This increases the risk of interdental caries.
The contact point between closely spaced teeth is neither visible to the dentist nor accessible to the toothbrush.
Therefore, dental floss is also mandatory for baby teeth. The prophylaxis team at Praxis am Kureck will explain the handling to parents and children in detail.
Professional Dental Cleaning
Even in our modern times, it is not a matter of course to have healthy, caries-free teeth. Unlike 20 or 30 years ago, we don’t just want to eliminate caries in your children today, but prevent it from developing in the first place. This requires a professional individual prophylaxis program.
The young patients are playfully introduced to dental care in our dental practice, so that they are motivated for domestic oral hygiene and take responsibility for their teeth.
Our prevention program includes, among other things:
- Intensive cleaning and polishing of the teeth
- Visualizing dangerous plaque
- Hardening of the tooth enamel with fluoride varnishes
- Tooth brushing school (demonstration of age-appropriate tooth brushing techniques, tips on the use of dental floss, information on fluoride administration)
- Information about the causes and type of caries
- Nutritional advice
- Determination of the individual caries risk (heredity, saliva tests)
Treatments
Diagnostics
Every treatment begins with a thorough diagnosis.
The dentist gets a picture of your child and their teeth. The caries risk is determined, and an individual treatment plan is based on it. Nutrition, tooth brushing habits and the use of fluoride also play a role. If necessary, critical areas are X‑rayed with a digital X‑ray machine with extremely low exposure. This allows a dental disease to be detected before it is visible or even noticeable from the outside.
Sealing
All teeth with deep grooves and pits on the chewing surface are particularly susceptible to caries. These teeth should be sealed even in children. A medically harmless, thin-bodied plastic is applied to the tooth surface under absolute dryness and hardened with a special lamp. In this way, we give your child’s teeth effective protection against caries.
There are different types of filling materials. We only use plastics as filling material. Plastic fillings have good adhesion and therefore a high load-bearing capacity. They are more durable. The costs for plastic are not fully covered by the statutory health insurance companies.
Placeholder
If a baby tooth has been lost prematurely due to an accident or caries, the resulting gap must be kept open for the subsequent tooth. This is done by a placeholder. A fixed placeholder is practical: it is firmly cemented in place and only needs to be reinserted if it loosens.
Nerve Treatment
In some cases, caries has attacked the nerve and the tooth requires nerve treatment. We provide such teeth with a children’s crown. Only then do they have a good chance of fulfilling their placeholder function until the natural tooth change.
Even teeth with a pronounced enamel defect are protected with a children’s crown so that they are fully functional again.
Baby Tooth Endodontology
Interdental caries is particularly dangerous for delicate baby teeth. The baby tooth nerve in particular can quickly become inflamed and die due to caries bacteria, even if the hole still looks small from the outside. If the nerve is also affected in teeth with deep caries, treatment is required. In most cases, the diseased part of the nerve must be removed.
However, it can also happen that a baby tooth dies. Then a root canal treatment is necessary as with adults. Optical changes in the tooth, a fistula or an abscess are the external signs. The cause of the death of a baby tooth is varied (accident, caries). The tooth must be treated in any case. After each root canal treatment, the tooth should be provided with a crown.
Insufficient or incorrect treatment (for example, leaving or drilling open the tooth) can lead to longer-term health damage – for example to the permanent tooth. For a detailed examination, we create a digital X‑ray image in the Praxis am Kureck.