Fiona Baker | Kidspot Editor | 2015
Children as young as 18 months are having surgery to remove teeth, decayed and rotten from drinking sugary soft drinks from baby bottles and sippy cups.
Dentists are referring to it as an epidemic – tots as young as 18 months having surgery to remove teeth, decayed and rotten from drinking sugary soft drinks in bottles and sippy cups.
Other rotting culprits are chocolate milk drinks and sweet treats at bed times.
In what the Australian Dental Association is calling a crisis, the latest data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) shows 7791 preschoolers and 13,905 children aged five-to-nine were admitted to hospital in 2011-12 because of tooth decay.
“Tooth extraction is the number one reason for hospital admissions for kids in Australia, and there are cases of toddlers having all their teeth extracted due to the severity of decay,” the association’s oral health committee chairman Peter Alldritt told news.com.au.
“Many of these hospitalisations are avoidable. It’s not good for a child to have a series of anaesthetics in regular procedures.
“Sadly, the problem is getting worse.”
The AIHW 2014 report found that more than half of all six year olds had experienced decay in their baby teeth. And the decay rate is steadily increasing.
Dr Alldritt added that it is not unusual to see a child who has reached four and never had their teeth brushed, as some parents have the idea that they are only milk teeth and will fall out.
“Kids have these teeth until they hit about 12.
The shame files
As Australia celebrates Dental Health Week, there is renewed focus on the amount of sugar we all eat, and how this not only impacts on our weight but our oral health.
Dentist and anti-sugar lobbyist Rob Beaglehole from New Zealand told stuff.co.nzthat he recently pulled several decayed teeth from an 18 month old, and had once treated a two year old who had been drinking cola from a baby bottle. The child’s teeth had dissolved down to the gum line and were bleeding.
He added that he also recently extracted 11 teeth from a three year old whose parents had let him drink Coke from a sipper bottle to “keep him happy”.
Another three year old needed four stainless steel crowns, had four teeth pulled and was given four fillings because of decays caused by the child’s parents putting Milo in a baby bottle to sip on overnight.
All these procedures were performed under general anaesthetic.
So what’s a parent to do?
It’s quite simple really – keep sweet treats to a minimum, don’t give your kids soft drinks and juice in bottles or sip cups (in fact, these drinks should be ‘sometimes’ drinks for a whole lot of health reasons), and start and teeth-cleaning program with your littlies from the moment the little gnashes burst through the gum.
We recently ran a story about how the UK’s Royal College of Surgeons suggested parents should still be actively supervising their children’s teeth cleaning – even cleaning their teeth for them – until they’re 14, but that’s probably not necessary. However, embedding good oral hygiene habits from the time they get teeth is important. So even if they are teenagers, it’s OK to remind them to floss and brush, and steer clear of all the sugary junk food.
Kidspot’s Dr Justin Coulson has the following advice for getting children into a good swing of things, teeth-wise, from an early age:
- Make sure that the toothpaste is not too minty for your kids
- Use the appropriate toothbrush and paste so as not to put them off
- Don’t force the issue – let them decide in their own time as they watch everyone else doing it and enjoying it
- Give them choice as to what brush they want
- Don’t threaten them with cavities and dentist visits
- Let the dentist focus on teaching them technique. Parents should just focus on helping them get into the habit and brush. (Many kids won’t develop great technique until at least age seven, and many adults still don’t brush properly anyway.)
And get into the habit of visiting the dentist every six months. Call yours today and make that step in promoting healthy teeth with your children.
