A photo of a child having their teeth checked. Photo / Christine Cornege
A Rotorua dentist is “highly concerned” about the time children are having to wait for dental surgery under general anaesthetic, with new figures showing some are waiting up to nine months.
The New Zealand Dental Association says the “complex problem” is “worsening” throughout the country.
A “frustrated” Taupō mother has spoken out after struggling for months to get her 6-year-old boy seven fillings - even reaching the point she was willing to shell out thousands of dollars for private surgery.
Te Whatu Ora - Health NZ Lakes data shows its average wait time for children 15 or under needing surgery is 131 days. Some were waiting up to nine months and 178 children in the age group were on the waitlist.
The average wait time for urgent cases was 29 days. The Lakes region includes Rotorua and Taupō.
The mother, who asked to not be named to protect her son’s privacy, said he was in “absolute agony” and sometimes struggled to eat and sleep because of the pain.
He needed dental treatment under general anaesthetic because of his “timidness and fear”, she said.
“He will wake up in the night crying and he will cry for hours. Sometimes he is in absolute agony.
“I want this to be resolved sooner rather than later - the sleepless nights are not doing anyone any good.”
There were days he would come home from school with uneaten lunch complaining about a sore mouth, she said.
She first called the Taupō Primary School Dental Clinic in October after her son complained of a sore tooth but was told he would need to wait for an appointment.
In January she took him to Rotorua dentist Dr Leroy Chan who referred her to the school dental clinic to start the process to receive dental surgery.
At the start of February, the boy had his first check-up at the clinic which referred him to Rotorua Hospital for surgery under general anaesthetic.
She said she was told by an oral health therapist at a dental check-up on April 17 the wait for surgery could be around 12 months, which left her feeling “frustrated”.
He was put on the urgent list for surgery and she told the Rotorua Daily Post yesterday he had been scheduled for surgery this month.
She previously said she had been considering paying for private treatment if it would get her son seen faster, and had booked a consultation with a Hamilton pediatric dentist this month.
She had been told private surgery would likely cost about $4000 - money she said she did not have but would have found “to make this happen”.
“I do feel for other parents out there where this wouldn’t even be able to be an option for them.”
She said it was really disappointing children were being allowed to “suffer like this”.
Te Whatu Ora Lakes would not comment on the boy’s case.
Ranolf Dental Surgery owner Dr Leroy Chan said he was “highly concerned” about the wait times and the “suffering of the children and their families”.
Chan assessed the “nervous” 6-year-old in January and said he was in pain with “numerous lesions” that needed treating. He wrote to Rotorua Hospital recommending he be put on the surgery waitlist.
“Until it’s treated, there is the risk of it progressing to the stage where it could abscess and get infected. Then we get to the state of extraction.”
Chan said, in his view, school dental clinics did not have the “people power to see children on time”, which resulted in decay worsening.
“This is bottom-of-the-cliff stuff. If the dental service is running behind, then you are getting more children not being treated in a timely manner.”
Te Whatu Ora acting hospital and specialist services lead for Lakes Gary Lees said a national shortage of dental therapists had “limited the capacity of the service”.
Lees said three new single-chair dental vans would be operational in the Lakes community “very soon” to provide more children with examinations.
He said parents were encouraged to enrol their baby with the Community Oral Health Service at birth, meaning their first examination would be at 12-15 months.
Children would normally get a check-up when a dental teams visited their school, and were eligible for recommended free annual check-ups until age 18.
However, workforce vacancies “affected the service’s ability to see and assess every child within these timeframes”, Lees said. Parents could make appointments as needed and a child in pain would “usually be seen on the same day”.
He said children who needed urgent dental surgery “typically” had severe pain, substantial infection and swelling from decayed teeth, pain causing sleep disruption, limited eating or could be “generally unwell”.
He said Te Whatu Ora Lakes was also looking to build on its successful programme of fluoridation visits to schools this year.
New Zealand Dental Association chief executive Dr Mo Amso said hospitals across the country have had “extensively long wait lists” of children needing dental treatment under general anaesthetic for years, and this had been exacerbated by Covid-19 lockdowns.
“Sadly this is not new but it’s a situation that is worsening. It’s quite a complex problem.”
Amso said contributing factors to wait times included workforce shortages - particularly of anaesthetic technicians - and surgical theatre availability.
Amso said the association welcomed the Government’s changes to its fast-track residency policy, adding 32 health sector roles to the Green List, which included dentists, oral health therapists and anaesthetic technicians.
Te Whatu Ora Population Health Programmes interim director Deborah Woodley said the number of children overdue for their routine examination through the Community Oral Health Service had increased since Covid.
Woodley said a number of initiatives from the Covid-19 Response and Recovery Fund were under way to improve waiting times for hospital care, with paediatric planned care dental procedures “prioritised” in this initiative.
A steering group was expected to release draft recommended actions to address oral health and dental therapy workforce issues in June.
Source: Te Whatu Ora Lakes
The woman was shaken by the incident.