A fissure sealant is resin flowed into the grooves on the chewing surface of a back tooth, then set with a light. No drilling, no needle, about five minutes a tooth.
The part that decides whether it was worth doing is not the material. It is which tooth, at what age, and how dry the tooth was when the resin went in.
Why grooves are the problem in the first place
Look at the chewing surface of a lower six-year-old molar under magnification and it is not a valley. It is a crack, often narrower at the top than at the bottom, and frequently narrower than a single toothbrush bristle.
That geometry is the whole issue. Bacteria and food get to the bottom of the fissure. A bristle does not. Fluoride helps enamel resist acid, but it cannot clean a space it cannot reach, which is why children with otherwise good brushing still get their first cavity on a molar groove. Sealing it removes the shelter rather than treating the bacteria.
Not every groove needs it. Some molars come through with shallow, rounded, self-cleansing fissures. Those we leave alone and watch. We assess each tooth rather than sealing everything that arrives, and we will tell you which of your child’s molars we think genuinely need it.
The timing that actually matters
The first permanent molars come through around age six, behind the last baby teeth, without anything falling out first. This is why they get missed. There is no wobbly tooth, no tooth fairy, no signal to a parent that something new has arrived.
The useful window is the first year or two after they erupt, before decay has had a chance to establish. A partially erupted molar with the gum still flapped over part of it cannot be sealed properly, because the tooth cannot be kept dry, and moisture on the tooth at the moment the resin goes in is the single most common reason a sealant fails within a year. So the timing is: fully through, gum settled, and then reasonably promptly.
The second permanent molars arrive around twelve, right at the back, and follow the same rule. Twelve is also the age when brushing supervision has usually stopped and diet has moved to whatever is sold near the school, so those teeth are worth checking specifically.
Baby molars can be sealed too, in a child with a high decay rate. It is less common, but it is not unusual here.
How we place them
Moisture control is the entire job, and it is where the corners get cut.
We isolate the tooth properly, using rubber dam where the tooth and the child allow it. Isolation is not a nicety on a sealant; a sealant placed on a wet tooth is a sealant that comes off. We would rather use rubber dam and lose two minutes than reseal the same molar next year.
Where a groove is stained and we cannot tell by eye whether decay has already started underneath, we will say so rather than seal over the top of it and hope. Sealing over active decay hides it from us at every future check-up. If the groove needs to be opened slightly with air abrasion first to see what is under there, we will explain that before we do it, and a small preventive resin restoration is often the honest answer instead of a plain sealant.
Then we check them at every recall. Sealants chip. A sealant is not a one-off event, it is something we maintain, and the six-monthly check is when we top up the ones that have worn at the margins.
What they cost, and who pays
The Child Dental Benefits Schedule covers fissure sealing, and we bulk bill under CDBS.
The rules, because the detail matters when you are planning a course of treatment:
- Eligibility is age 0 to 17 for at least one day of the calendar year, where the family receives an eligible payment such as Family Tax Benefit Part A.
- The cap is $1,158 over two consecutive calendar years, or $1,132 if your child’s two-year window opened in 2025.
- A bulk-billed CDBS service cannot carry a co-payment. If a practice bulk bills your child’s sealants and then charges you a gap on that same item, that is not permitted.
- CDBS covers exams, x-rays, cleans, fissure sealing, fillings, root canals, extractions and partial dentures. It does not cover orthodontics or general anaesthetic.
Four molars sealed in one appointment is well within a year’s CDBS benefit, which is the practical reason to do them when they erupt rather than putting them off.
If you are not CDBS eligible: Smile Squad covers every Victorian government school student, no card and no Medicare requirement, and sealants are part of what it does. Public dental covers children 0 to 12, free with a concession card and otherwise $40 flat per child capped at $160 per family.
Privately, sealants in Australia generally run somewhere around $45 to $90 per tooth, so four molars is roughly $180 to $360. Those are indicative national ranges rather than a quote. We give you the figure in writing before we start, and we run HICAPS on site so you see your extras rebate before you leave. We are an HCF preferred provider under More For Teeth.
Sealants are not the whole prevention plan
A sealed molar can still decay between the teeth, where the sealant does not go and where the toothbrush also does not reach. So sealants sit alongside flossing once the back teeth touch, topical fluoride, and the drinks conversation. Sports drinks and juice do damage to the smooth surfaces that a sealant does nothing about.
If decay has already started in a groove, the sealant is not the answer for that tooth. Depending on how far it has gone we may use silver diamine fluoride to arrest it, a glass ionomer restoration, or a conventional filling. We use a lot of silver diamine fluoride here, mostly for children, and it buys time in a young or anxious child who is not ready to sit through a filling.
Getting them checked
The two ages worth booking specifically for are six and twelve, when the permanent molars arrive. Between those, the six-monthly check picks it up anyway.
We are at 129A Canterbury Road, Blackburn, with on-site parking and Saturday mornings 9:00 to 1:00, which is easier than pulling a child out of school. Blackburn Primary on Surrey Road, Laburnum Primary and Blackburn Lake Primary are all a short drive, and we see a lot of siblings booked back to back. Consultations are available in Mandarin, Cantonese, Teochew and Shanghainese as well as English.
Call (03) 8838 8820 or text 0435 025 318.
More on fissure sealants, on children’s dentistry and on no-drill options for kids. See also when a filling is genuinely needed and sports drinks and kids’ teeth.