healthmedicinet

Graham Barnby, honorary vice-president of the British Dental Health
Foundation, said: “It all relates to the consumption of sugary, fizzy
drinks.”

Kathryn Harley, a consultant in paediatric dentistry, said: “We have children
who require all 20 of their baby teeth to be extracted. It beggars belief
that their diets could produce such a drastic effect.”

She added: “They are going into hospital because they are either presenting
with acute problems with pain or because the stage of dental disease, the
number of teeth with decay, is such that they need a general anaesthetic.”

Ms Harley said most children need four to eight teeth removed but that having
ten to 14 extracted is not uncommon.

She claimed fruit juice should be banned in schools to prevent the problem
worsening and pointed the finger at parents who were “inadvertently
responsible”.

NHS England also urged parents to take action to protect their childrens’
dental health.

“We have some of the lowest rates of tooth decay in the world but these
statistics are of course worrying,” the health body said in a statement.

“Parents of young children should discourage them from drinking fizzy drinks
as this can lead to tooth decay.”

The rising number of young tooth decay patients has also raised questions
about whether dentists should carry out more childhood fillings.

Professor Jimmy Steele, head of the dentistry school at Newcastle University,
said some dentists are unwilling to carry out filling due to uncertainty
about their effectiveness.

They prefer to monitor decay in the baby teeth, he claimed.

“Dentists are much less likely nowadays than they used to be to try to fill
teeth using conventional measures,” he said.

Tonsillitis is the second most common reason for children of 5 to 9 being
admitted to hospital, with 11,522 cases in 2012-13.