30,000 Children A Year In UK Need Hospital Treatment For Tooth Decay

That very young children are experiencing the severe pain of toothache is disturbing in itself and indicates that parents are allowing too many sweets and sugary snacks and not ensuring that their children brush their teeth properly. To a great extent tooth decay is an avoidable health problem for children who eat a healthy diet. But then the experience of going into hospital for tooth extraction is an additional trauma.

Unfortunately, in England there is a shortage of NHS dentists and in many areas of the country people find it impossible to get treatment from one. Private dentistry (i.e. non-NHS) is extremely expensive, far too expensive for poorer families, the families whose children tend to have poorer diets and more dental caries, so this exacerbates the problem.

Years ago general dental practioners mostly extracted children's teeth in their surgeries and did not have the assistance of an anaesthetist even when a general anaesthetic was used. But this practice led to several deaths because of the difficulties of one person doing the extraction at the same time as monitoring the effect of the anaesthetic on the patient, so since 2001 use of general anaesthesia in dentistry has moved away from dental practice to hospital, where an anaesthetist always sees to the anaesthetic. My personal opinion is that it is better and safer to use local anaesthetic injected into the gum, rather than general anaesthetic, but this is not always feasible with very young children.

There is an on-going debate about whether to fluoridate our drinking supplies. Some dentists believe this would protect some children's teeth from decay. Opponents of fluoridation object to "forced medication" of everyone using the drinking water supply, and they point to evidence of possible harm that could come from this measure.

Clearly prevention of dental decay would be far better for children than extracting teeth at an early age, and it seems to me that more emphasis should be laid on this when health professionals are giving routine advice to parents of young children. Children's teeth need to be protected from the harm that repeated exposure to sweets and sugary food can cause.

Margaret Wilde www.wildeaboutsteroids.co.uk