Health secretary pressed to set out tooth extraction action plan

The British Dental Association (BDA) has joined with sector leaders and learning disability charity Mencap to press Health Secretary Matt Hancock to set out an action plan to ease the

backlog on tooth extractions in hospitals, warning many young and vulnerable patients across England are now expected to see waiting times of up to a year lengthen significantly. Extractions

are the responsibility of community dental services and hospital dental services. Frontline intelligence gathered by the BDA across the English regions suggests many services have yet to

resume treatment since the start of lockdown, and where they have the capacity has often halved to meet social distancing and additional infection control procedures. Tooth decay has been

immovable as the number one reason for hospital admissions among young children, with recent analysis by the Local Government Association indicating 180 procedures took place every working

day in England in 2018/19 on patients aged under 18. Extractions formed part of the many elective procedures that were postponed among 50,000 children from March to May. High demand and

underinvestment had seen waiting times hit over a year prior to the pandemic, a figure which is now expected to surge. Official targets for delivering treatment vary by area from four to 18

weeks, owing to different approaches to commissioning services. In an open letter to the Health Secretary the group has called for an urgent action plan, and to publish an internal Public

Health England review into the true scale of extractions under general anaesthetic, which is thought to be significantly understated in official statistics. Charlotte Waite, Chair of the

BDA's England Community Dental Services Committee said: 'The government has a responsibility to act for patients, many of whom were already facing a year of toothache and the

impact this has on their general wellbeing. 'We need a plan, and full disclosure on the true scale of a problem that is already a national scandal.' RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Reprints

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