USA - State Lags in Dental Health Care for Children
By LAURIE UDESKY
Published: May 21, 2010
Early in the morning on April 2, Dominique Allen’s family rushed her to the emergency room at Petaluma Valley Hospital because of jaw pain and inflammation.
An infection from four rotting or decayed molars had spread into the jaw and neck of Dominique, 16, causing so much swelling that she could hardly open her mouth or breathe. Her condition was “life-threatening,” according to a case history from Community Action Partnership of Sonoma. After spending Easter weekend in the hospital, Dominique was operated on, free of charge, by Dr. Robert Allen (no relation) of Petaluma.
Although Dominique’s case was extreme, it is not unusual in California for children to suffer crippling pain and disability from untreated tooth decay. By the age of 5, 28 percent of the state’s children have untreated dental decay, according to the most recent statewide figures.
In 2007, the last year that data for many reports was available, more than 500,000 California children between the ages of 5 and 17 missed at least one day of school in a year because of dental problems, costing school districts $29.7 million dollars in lost revenue.
California children’s dental health was ranked third from the bottom in the National Survey of Children’s Health, above only Arizona and Texas. In the Bay Area, children and teenagers up to the age of 17 made nearly 1,980 visits to emergency rooms for preventable dental conditions in 2007. The cost of these visits averaged $172, but if a problem required hospitalization it cost an average of $5,000.
Today, experts interviewed said the dental care crisis had reached an even more alarming level. “We can only go up from here,” said Dr. Jared I. Fine, the dental health administrator at Alameda County Public Health Department. “We have an epidemic of dental disease in children that’s absurdly pervasive.”
Dr. Fine said that the medical and dental community has known for decades that dental disease needs to be tackled in early childhood, but programs to do so are “in their infancy,” and poorly financed. Six to eight young children a day — typically from disadvantaged families — are put under general anesthesia or sedation at the Pediatric Dentistry Residency Program at University of California at San Francisco for surgeries, including multiple extractions, and root canals on baby teeth. ..........
Texas the worst? With all that fluoride in their water?
Published: May 21, 2010
Early in the morning on April 2, Dominique Allen’s family rushed her to the emergency room at Petaluma Valley Hospital because of jaw pain and inflammation.
An infection from four rotting or decayed molars had spread into the jaw and neck of Dominique, 16, causing so much swelling that she could hardly open her mouth or breathe. Her condition was “life-threatening,” according to a case history from Community Action Partnership of Sonoma. After spending Easter weekend in the hospital, Dominique was operated on, free of charge, by Dr. Robert Allen (no relation) of Petaluma.
Although Dominique’s case was extreme, it is not unusual in California for children to suffer crippling pain and disability from untreated tooth decay. By the age of 5, 28 percent of the state’s children have untreated dental decay, according to the most recent statewide figures.
In 2007, the last year that data for many reports was available, more than 500,000 California children between the ages of 5 and 17 missed at least one day of school in a year because of dental problems, costing school districts $29.7 million dollars in lost revenue.
California children’s dental health was ranked third from the bottom in the National Survey of Children’s Health, above only Arizona and Texas. In the Bay Area, children and teenagers up to the age of 17 made nearly 1,980 visits to emergency rooms for preventable dental conditions in 2007. The cost of these visits averaged $172, but if a problem required hospitalization it cost an average of $5,000.
Today, experts interviewed said the dental care crisis had reached an even more alarming level. “We can only go up from here,” said Dr. Jared I. Fine, the dental health administrator at Alameda County Public Health Department. “We have an epidemic of dental disease in children that’s absurdly pervasive.”
Dr. Fine said that the medical and dental community has known for decades that dental disease needs to be tackled in early childhood, but programs to do so are “in their infancy,” and poorly financed. Six to eight young children a day — typically from disadvantaged families — are put under general anesthesia or sedation at the Pediatric Dentistry Residency Program at University of California at San Francisco for surgeries, including multiple extractions, and root canals on baby teeth. ..........
Texas the worst? With all that fluoride in their water?
posted by Bill at
8:36 AM
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