Lara,

Toddlers have deciduous teeth or baby teeth which have a pulp chamber in the center of the tooth that contains nerve tissue just like adult teeth. However the root structure is much different in that the roots of baby teeth are very tiny and short whereas in adult teeth the root structure is much wider and longer.

When decay enters the pulp chamber of any tooth, infection develops and the only options are treatment or extraction. The procedure to remove the infected nerve from that chamber is called a pulpotomy. Because baby teeth have so little root structure, the pulpotomy is the "root canal" on a baby tooth.

Hope that answers your question...............

Bryanna