Sir, in our overview of 40 years of surveys of Children's Dental Health,1 we reported that 33% of 15-year-old children had permanent teeth extracted because of decay in 1973, reducing to 24% in 1983, and then to 7% in 1993. It has remained near to that figure for the last 20 years.
The proportion of 15-year-olds undergoing extractions as part of orthodontic treatment ranged from 21–26% between 1973 and 2003.2,3 We examined the raw data, recently made available, of 2,415 15-year-old children from the 2013 survey of England, Wales and Northern Ireland.4 Fifteen percent of 15-year-olds in England had had at least one tooth extracted as part of orthodontic treatment, compared with 16% in Wales and 21% in Northern Ireland. The teeth most commonly extracted were: upper first premolars (8.9%), lower first premolars (4.1%), and upper and lower second premolars (3.8%). Less than 1% of first permanent molars were extracted for orthodontic reasons. In England and Wales, 7% of 15-year-olds had four teeth extracted, 6% had two teeth extracted and 2–3% had one tooth extracted.
In our previous paper,1 we did note the problems with analysing trends due to changing methodologies in the surveys but that for 12- and 15-year-olds, the impact was likely to be minimal. It does therefore appear that the proportion of 15-year-olds who have had extractions for orthodontic treatment has decreased over the last ten years, despite a relatively constant number of 12-year-olds undergoing orthodontic treatment at the time of the survey (8-9%) and an increase in the number of 15-year-olds under treatment from 14% to 18%.3,4
References
Murray J J, Vernazza C R, Holmes R D . Forty years of national surveys: an overview of children's dental health from 1973-2013. Br Dent J 2015; 219: 281–285.
Todd J E . Children's dental health in England and Wales in 1973. London: HMSO, 1975.
Lader D, Chadwick B, Chestnutt I et al. Children's dental health in the United Kingdom, 2003. London: The Stationery Office, 2005.
Office for National Statistics. Social Survey Division. (2015). Children's Dental Health Survey, 2013. [data collection]. UK Data Service. SN: 7774, http://doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-7774-1 (accessed February 2017).
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Vernazza, C., Murray, J. Child dental health: Forty year overview. Br Dent J 222, 406–407 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.bdj.2017.247
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.bdj.2017.247