Dental News - Children with tooth ache see pharmacist or emergency doctor rather than dentist

Dental Tribune UK

Mon. 5. March 2018

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LONDON, UK: In England, dentists are often not the first person to see a child suffering from oral pain, a survey published in The BMJ has confirmed. Instead, the majority of parents in the country heavily rely on pharmacies and non-dental health services, like accident and emergency departments (A & Es), to help address their children’s emergency dental problems.

Conducted by researchers at the Institute of Dentistry at Queen Mary University of London, the study looked at data collected from over 900 pharmacies in and around London from November 2016 to January 2017. According to the results, two-thirds of parents had requested pain medications for their children owing to dental problems. Of those, only every third child with oral pain had seen a dentist before visiting the pharmacy, while almost every third had presented to a non-dental health professional, such as a general medical practitioner.

Although many parents had sought help during weekends, when dental health services were not available, the figures show a clear underuse of dental services in the country, the researchers suggested. They said that the annual costs for the use of non-dental services amounted to £373,288, which translates to £2.3 million of preventable costs for the NHS when replicated to all pharmacies in England.

“Children with oral pain need to see a dentist for a definitive diagnosis and to treat any tooth decay,” said lead researcher Dr Vanessa Muirhead, clinical senior lecturer at the Institute of Dentistry. “Not treating a decayed tooth can result in more pain, abscesses and possible damage to children’s permanent teeth.”

“These children had not only failed to see a dentist before their pharmacy visit; they had seen GPs and a range of other health professionals outside dentistry. This inappropriate and overuse of multiple health services including A & E is costing the NHS a substantial amount of money at a time when reducing waste is a government priority,” she added.

According to 2016 statistics, only 58 per cent of children in England and 49 per cent of children in London had visited a dentist that year, even though dental care is free for under-18s and national guidelines recommend dental visits at least every year for children.

The study, titled “Children’s toothache is becoming everybody’s business: Where do parents go when their children have oral pain in London, England? A cross-sectional analysis”, was published in BMJ Open on 28 February 2018.

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