WITH horror stories of DIY dental mishaps during the pandemic and greatly reduced availability of routine and emergency services, the British Dental Association (BDA) estimates that around 38 million dental appointments have been lost since March 2020 as a direct result of COVID 19 restrictions.

This is being in some part addressed by a much-needed infusion of £50 million and the provision of a hoped for 350,000 extra dental appointments in the coming months, some of which will be out of routine hours, to cope with the enormous backlog.

In recent years we have become more smile conscious, enhanced of late by the so called “Zoom Effect”, where online meetings have made many analyse their teeth to a much greater degree, often critically. Demand for cosmetic dental treatments has sky rocketed of late.

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Yet the foundations of a healthy smile start much earlier, with the British Society of Paediatric Dentistry advocating a “dental check by one” or as soon as a child’s first teeth have erupted, with a minimum of yearly review thereafter.

While it may be easy to blame coronavirus for many unfortunate issues, child dental health has been a significant worry much before this, with statistics from 2017-18 showing a quarter of children having noticeable dental decay by their fifth birthday. Sadly, this figure can be twice as high in areas of deprivation. This is despite demonstrable advances in child and adult dental health between 1983 – 2013.

You might wonder why a doctor is wading in to the debate on oral health, but if a child is brought to a consultation and shows signs of significant dental decay, this raises concerns about neglect, and naturally cannot be overlooked.

It may come as a surprise that childhood dental disease is among the top conditions requiring hospital admission between the ages of five to nine, and has the dubious honour of being the most likely reason for a child needing a general anaesthetic (GA). Separate to the risks associated with GA, childhood dental disease constitutes a vast financial burden, affecting much more than just the NHS.

For children dental disease results in pain, inability to eat, disturbed sleep and in the UK, an estimated sixty thousand lost school days, every year.

Children are great observers of parental behaviour and adults should practice good dental habits.