The relationship between children's dental caries experience and the prescription of general anaesthetics. an evaluation of the effectiveness of a Personal Dental Service Pilot.
OBJECTIVE
To determine if there was a high correlation between the prescription of a general anaesthetic for dental treatment in young children by a Personal Dental Services (PDS) general anaesthetic pilot and the dental health of children at a ward level.


METHODS
Postcode data from an audit of the single dental general anaesthetic provider in an area was extracted and mapped to individual wards. A proxy for the oral health population was obtained by using the results of a large-scale dental prevalence study of five-year-olds. The wards were ranked into quintiles by dmft and a mean dmft calculated for each. There were 1,406 patients who had a general anaesthetic, 74% were aged 11 years or less.


METHODS
A personal dental service dental general anaesthetic pilot in the north of England providing services for a population of approximately 300,000 residents in a non-fluoridated area. RESULTS There was a positive correlation between increasing levels of dental decay in the population and increasing intervention ratios for dental treatment under general anaesthesia (r2 = 0.90).


CONCLUSIONS
The PDS pilot provided dental care under general anaesthesia for more patients from wards with poor dental health than from wards with better dental health.
Adams
G C
GC
Department of Orthodontics, Sunderland Royal Hospitals, UK.
Landes
D P
DP
D000766:Anesthesia, Dental / Q000379:methods*; D000768:Anesthesia, General / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004245:DMF Index; D003731:Dental Caries / Q000453:epidemiology*; D004739:England; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D010865:Pilot Projects; D019239:Practice Patterns, Dentists' / Q000191:economics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D017062:Small-Area Analysis; D014081:Tooth Extraction / Q000706:statistics & numerical data