Half of all Scots children have decay in their adult teeth

azzuri · Half of all Scots children have decay in their adult teeth

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Half of all Scots children have decay in their adult teeth

By Judith Duffy, Health Correspondent

CHILDREN in Scotland have the worst dental health in the UK, according to a new report which reveals that almost half of all 11-year-olds are already suffering from decay in their adult teeth.
Forty-seven per cent of children leaving Scottish primaries have dec ayed, missing or filled teeth, compared with 31% in Eng land and Wales.

The shocking stat istics underline Scotland’s terrible record on dental health, with poor diet and a love of sugary and fizzy drinks cited as one of the biggest causes.

Dental experts have now renewed controversial calls to fluoridate the water supply, a move which they argue would be the most effective way of reversing the dental crisis.

The report, published in the March issue of the journal Community Dental Health, was the first carried out into 11-year-olds in Scotland. It showed that the Western Isles had the greatest percentage of children with decayed teeth at 57.6%, with Greater Glasgow next highest at 53.4%.

Across Scotland the average number of rotten teeth in children who had dental decay was almost three per child, compared with just over two in England and Wales.

Chris Deery, a consultant in paediatric dentistry at Edinburgh Dental Institute, said dental decay was a socioeconomic disease, affecting those in deprived areas the most. “In practical terms, that means it is the rubbish Scottish diet,” he said.

He added that “lazy and ignorant” parents were failing to ensure children brushed their teeth. “A lot of parents don’t help their children brush their teeth, if their children even brush their teeth twice a day. A lot of them are leaving kids of two or three to do it themselves … that is partly laziness and partly ignorance,” he said.

Deery acknowledged that efforts were under way to tackle the problem, such as toothbrushing schemes in nursery schools, but warned it would be years before improvements were seen.

Dr Andrew Lamb, national director for the British Dental Association (BDA) Scotland, agreed that deprivation had a large part to play in Scotland’s poor record on oral health and called for a campaign to tackle the problem.

“I think what is required is an education programme to encourage those parents who are currently not seeking dental advice for their children to seek dental advice,” he said.

However, Lamb also argued that fluoride should be added to drinking water in the most deprived communities, a controversial move which has been adopted in some parts of England, such as Birmingham. The new statistics show that only around one in five 11-year-olds now have tooth decay in the Midlands city.

“We do know one of the simplest and most effective, cost-effective ways of improving oral health in children would be to put fluoride in the water,” Lamb said.

“The BDA’s policy is to support water fluoridation, which is targeted at those communities which are most in need of it, but following consultation with that community.”

Dr Steve Creanor, a senior lecturer in oral sciences at Glasgow University Dental School, agreed that water fluoridation would be the best way forward, but said it was unlikely due to strong opposition to such a move.

“The single best approach is that the water should be fluoridated,” he said. “However, because it is a political issue rather than a health issue, it is really unlikely to happen. It has been a political hot potato for years.”

The new survey, which was carried out by the British Association for the Study of Community Dentistry, also measured the care of decayed teeth in children, an indication of access to dental services.

In Scotland, just under half – 46% – of cavities in teeth have been restored, slightly higher than in England and Wales, at 41%. However in Ayrshire and Arran, which records the lowest figure north of the Border, it falls to just 37%.

The issue of access to NHS dentists has been seen as a major problem for dental health in Scotland, which was highlighted last year by scenes of hundreds of people queuing in the street to sign up as private patients after their dentist quit the health service.

A multi-million-pound plan to overhaul NHS dentistry was announced by the Executive a year ago, with extra allowances to reward dentists for carrying out NHS work. Practices were promised extra cash, but only if they provided treatment to 100 fee-paying NHS adults and 500 NHS adults in total.

However, the deal has triggered criticism from the BDA, which says some practices that don’t meet those criteria are missing out on the payments despite treating hundreds of children or exempt adults on the NHS. The dentists’ body claims some practitioners could now be forced to drop health service patients altogether, exacerbating the current shortage of NHS dentists.

Nationalist northeast MSP Richard Loch head said the new figures re inforced the need to improve the availability of NHS dentistry.

“Our dental health statistics, particularly for young children, are bad enough as it is without the current crisis that has arisen due to a shortage of dentists,” he said. “Unless ministers get a grip of this issue and ensure there is widespread availability of NHS dentists in our communities, it is unlikely the situation will be able to improve as more and more patients become deregistered from dentists, making it even less likely that children get regular check-ups.”

A spokesman for the Executive said that individual NHS boards could consider adding fluoride to the water supply following public consultation, but added that 97% of the public who responded to a national consultation three years ago opposed the idea.

He also insisted that the Executive was on course to meet its target for 60% of 11 to 12-year-olds in Scotland to have no signs of dental decay in four years’ time.

The spokesman added: “The initial summary data we have been given points out that a number of health boards have already achieved the target and that the majority of health boards are on their way to achieving the target by 2010.”

02 April 2006

SLG

Blackleaf

The Scots are an unhealthy lot.

Despite the fact that this Scottish New Labour Government spends more, per capita, on the health service in Scotland than it does in England, the Scots still manage to be more unhealthy than the English in many ways.

Blackleaf

Heart disease rate is 62% higher in Scotland than in England.

'X-factor' causes Scots to have higher heart disease rates, say scientists

Main Category: Cardiovascular / Cardiology News
Article Date: 24 Jun 2005 - 9:00am (PDT)

Unknown factors not linked to diet, smoking or poverty may make Scots people more prone to heart disease, research led by University of Edinburgh has revealed. The findings, which are published in the current edition of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, conclude that although successful campaigns to get Scots to live a healthier lifestyle will reduce rates of heart disease in Scotland, they will not do much to narrow the gap in heart disease rates between Scotland and England. More research is called for into how and why Scots get heart disease at such high rates.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh, University College London and Imperial College London compared heart disease rates in Scotland and England. As expected, they found the rates are much (62%) higher in Scotland. However, then they tried to explain the higher rates by taking account of differences in wealth, health behaviours such as smoking, drinking and taking exercise and other biological characteristics such as cholesterol levels.

Principal investigator Dr Richard Mitchell, of the University of Edinburgh said: "We found that Scots are more likely to be in worse economic situations, to have had problems with drinking, to smoke --and those who do smoke, smoke more than English smokers-- and less likely to take exercise. However, these differences do not explain much of the higher rate of heart disease in Scotland. Even after taking account of personal economic circumstances, health behaviours and blood chemistry ,including cholesterol levels, the average Scot is still 50% more likely to have heart disease than the average English person. We think that there may be unknown genetic, behavioural or environmental factors which make Scots more at risk of heart disease.

He added: "This was a really surprising result. We expected to find that Scots have higher rates of heart disease just because they tend to be less wealthy and tend to have less healthy lifestyles than their English neighbours.

"People choosing a healthy lifestyle for themselves, and government tackling poverty, are still the best ways to reduce heart disease, but it seems that there may be something else contributing to Scotland's terrible record with this disease. We need to do more work to find out what that 'X-factor' might be.

"This was a powerful study because, unlike other previous work, it looked at a wide variety of the factors which can put someone at risk of heart disease - everything from their employment status, to their lifestyle, to the chemistry of their blood and their mental health. It was also an important study because it used data from men and women from the whole of Scotland and England, rather than from just one or two towns or cities, or just one sex. The study used data from the Scottish Health Survey, and the Health Survey for England. It focused on people aged 45-74 years old because it is at these ages that the biggest differences between the two countries in death rates for heart disease usually occur."

medicalnewstoday.com

Aventinian

Fix 'em all up with a pair of NHS dentures.

azzuri

Half of all Scots children have decay in their adult teeth

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