Do Adults Need Dental Sealants?
Sealants have a reputation as a kids thing. Something that happens once, around age seven, and then never comes up again.
For a lot of adults that is roughly right. For some, it is leaving an easy win on the table.
Here is how to tell which one you are.
What a sealant is
Look at the biting surface of one of your back teeth in a mirror. It is not flat. It has a pattern of grooves and pits across it.
Some of those grooves are narrower than a single toothbrush bristle. Food and bacteria get down in there. The brush does not.
A sealant is a thin coating painted into those grooves and hardened with a light. It fills the valleys so the surface becomes smooth enough to clean.
That is the whole idea. It is not a filling and it does not treat anything. It closes off the spot where most cavities on back teeth begin.
Why it gets called a kids treatment
Because that is when the payoff is biggest. Molars arrive around six and twelve, they are brand new, and the grooves are at their deepest before years of chewing have worn them down.
Kids are also, as a group, not brilliant at brushing the back of the mouth.
So sealants got filed under pediatric, and nobody moved them. But nothing about how they work stops at eighteen.
If your grooves are deep and you get cavities in them again and again, the same coating does the same job at forty.
Who benefits as an adult
Five situations come up again and again.
Your back teeth get cavities in the same grooves again and again. If the last two or three fillings you have had were all on biting surfaces, that pattern is the whole argument.
Your molars have deep, dark grooves with no decay yet. We can see this at a checkup.
Some people have grooves you could lose a fork in and others have almost none. It is luck, not hygiene.
Your mouth gets dry. Saliva is your natural rinse, and plenty of common medications slow it down. Less saliva means cavities form faster, and grooves are where they start.
Your gums have receded and root surfaces are showing. Root surface is softer than enamel and it decays more easily. There is a version of this conversation for those spots too.
You are heading into orthodontic treatment. Cleaning gets harder for a while, and a sealed groove is one less place to worry about.
Who can skip them
If your back teeth already have fillings across the biting surfaces, there are no grooves left to seal. The filling is already doing that job.
If your molars are shallow and you have never had a cavity on a biting surface, sealing them solves a problem you do not have.
And if there is already decay in a groove, that is a filling, not a sealant. Sealing over active decay traps it, so we check before anything gets painted on.
We will tell you which of these you are. Sealants are cheap enough that there is no reason to recommend them to somebody who does not need them.
What the visit involves
It is one of the shortest things we do.
The tooth gets cleaned and dried. A gel goes on for a few seconds to give the surface some grip, then gets rinsed off.
The sealant is painted into the grooves, and a blue light sets it in about twenty seconds. We check your bite and adjust if it feels high.
No drilling. No numbing. A few minutes per tooth, and you eat normally straight afterward.
Most people have it done during a regular checkup. Ask about it if you are already coming in for a first visit or a cleaning.
How long do they last?
Several years is normal, and some last a decade. They wear down gradually. Nothing fails all at once.
Chipping is the thing to watch for, because a sealant with a gap in it is worse than none at all. Bacteria get in and the coating traps them.
We check them at every checkup. Topping one up takes a couple of minutes and there is nothing to remove first.
If you grind your teeth, they wear faster. That is worth knowing about for reasons well beyond sealants, and whether a night guard stops grinding covers those.
The short version
Sealants are preventive and quick. For the right adult they head off fillings that would otherwise turn up one at a time over the next ten years.
For the wrong adult they are unnecessary. The way to find out is to have someone look at your own grooves.
Our page on dental sealants in Chicago has the detail on materials and what they cost.
Coming to see us
We are at 1908 N Western Ave in Bucktown, steps from the Western Blue Line stop. Parking behind the building is limited, so call ahead if you need a spot.
We are open Monday to Thursday from 9 AM to 5 PM, Friday until 3 PM, and Saturday mornings until 2 PM.
Ask us at your next checkup and we will look at your back teeth with you on the screen. Book a visit whenever suits you.
