DENTAL DECAY HAVOC

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18799, 28 August 1924, Page 12

DENTAL DECAY HAVOC

CONDITIONS IN AUCKLAND. PERFECT TEHTH VERY RARE. LESSONS 'OF EXAMINATION-. DIET AND RESTRICTIONS. Fiftv thousand school children in tile 'Auckland province require some form of dantal treatment. That is an official estimate following upon a systematic examination of juvenile teeth by school nier? ; <:cl officers and, nurses. There are 64,000 children between the ages of. five and 14 years attending the Auckland provincial schools. Of _ that youthful army, mostly pampered in respect of diet and the disciplinary restrictions which give a nation biting force, less than 1500 have perfect teeth. The proportion of flawless teeth to those classified as indifferently good, defective, and bad is fractionally more than two P casos dental defects and decay are very bad. This is disclosed by the activities of the medical officers for schools and also by the work of the dental clinic at the Beresford Street school. There is no difficulty now in getting children to attend this clinic for treatment. The number of children already passed through the clinic is fell .over 0000. - Actual treatments total 2400. Practically no pyorrhoea has been seen, hut there have been many dental abscesses. In many cases sores on the body have disappeared when the child's teeth wero put right. It is recogmsed that children's teeth should be examined every three months, but at present it can be done only every eight months because of staff shortage. The clinic serves soven of the metropolitan schools. Incidence oi Dental Disease. Tvpiral cases treated at this school clinic show that there is something far "wrong with the dietary standard of living. A few of these case 3 may be cited. The first on the list is that of a girl nine years of age whose dental condition necessitated the extraction of 15 teeth, oi which 11 were temporary or first teeth and four permanent. A boy six years of age required to have six permanent teeth extracted, two permanent and eight temporary teeth filled. Another boy, but five years of age, had seven temporary teeth extracted and seven more filled. A"girl, six years of age, required treatment for nine temporary teeth, the extraction ei three similar teeth and one . permanent tooth filled. So the sorry record goes on and is everywhere common. And yet, and yet, administrators and the sanhedrin of higher education declare that there is no scope for a dental school in Auckland! A complete detailed record of the dental health of the Dominion is not yet available, but even the preliminary investigations have shown clearly that the havoc of dental decay is national in its incidence. There is already reason for assuming, if not for declaring, that Young New Zealand reveals a comparatively low standard of dental health. In the records of school medical examination inhere are many, lessons for the "general public and particularly for the parental section. Theories as to the causation of dental caries need not here be discussed, except to note that all the experts in the subject agree that the increasing use of refined, denatured foods, such as white.fiV/Ur and sugar, has a great deal to do with the trouble. "Well-to-do" Children Worst. Informative observations on the problem are made by an Auckland school medical officer in the course of an interesting contribution to the latest issue of the New Zealand Medical Journal. The article discusses the results of an examination of 4674 children in the Otago school district. Two per cent, of the total had perfect sets of teeth. In the case of 3577 children, 23,779 carious o? treated teeth were found, giving an average of 6.6 carious or treated teeth per head; 1.9 per cent, bad perfect sets of teeth; 17.7 per cent, had enlarged tonsils; 57.3 per cent, had enlarged cervical glands; and /38.7 per cent, had a deformity of the jaw or Irregularity of the teeth. _ A classified record of "dental examination of school children in the Auckland district has not been completed, but results so far show that conditions in the North are no better, and probably worse than those observed in Otago. Examination in Dunedin showed that the school children drawn from some of J the best homes in that city easily topped the list for carious teeth, the average of 122 such children examined being 8.1 per ' cent. Recent investigations among Maori children give an average of 4 carious or treated teeth per head. In several cases where extreme poverty was reported by the teacher, the teeth of j the children were found to be in very good condition. It is one of the few advantages of being very poor. Children from orphanages had, as a rule, better teeth than those wfeo lived at home, Immigrant children usually had good sets of teeth compared with those of the native-born. Position in Orchard \Areas. Seventy children of orchardists, living along the;valley of the Clutha, had ssu average of. 7.1 carious treated teeth per headt.compared with the average of 6.6 recorded for all the children examined. A* a rule, children who lived in the orchard lands of Central Otago had no better teeth than those who lived where sheep or dairy farming predominate. This suggests that fruit per se does not play such an important part in the prevention of dental varies as has been supposed. In several cases of, individual perfect sets of teeth., a history was elicited of an upbringing on the Plunket system in babyhood. This had often been followed by a restricted use of sugar, the free use of toasts or crusts, wholemeal or brown bread in place of white, and special atteno tion to the inclusion of fruit and vege- . tables in the dietary. It was also found that children in country schools remote from a store or sweetshop had much less defective teeth than 7.hose in similar schools close to a sweetshop. Of the 1074 children seen in two schools ; in Dunedin, 180, or 16.7 per cent!, had undergone an operation for enlarged tonsils. If there is to be a reduction of dental caries in "the rising generation, experts agree that the most promising aids would seem to be regularity and simplicity of meals and the restricted use of sweets, sweet biscuits smd cakes.