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

Objectives 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. Basic research design Postcode data from an audit of the single dental general anaesthetic provider in an area was extracted and 44 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. Setting 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 (r(2) = 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.