Dental Services: Children
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many children aged four and under have been admitted to hospital for tooth extraction due to decay in each of the last five years.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock
The following tables show the number of Finished Consultant Episodes for tooth extraction, with caries as the primary diagnosis code, from 2018/19 to 2022/23:
| Age 0 to 4 years old |
2022/23 | 4,383 |
| Age 0 to 5 years |
2021/22 | 7,496 |
2020/21 | 4,441 |
2019/20 | 10,581 |
2018/19 | 11,397 |
Source: the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities’ annual statistics on tooth extractions, available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hospital-based-tooth-extractions-in-0-to-19-year-olds
Data in 2022/23 was reported for the age band zero to four years old. However, data for all previous years was reported for the age band zero to five years old. The data is reported as the number of Finished Consultant Episodes, therefore the data does not represent the number of individual children who received these treatments, as one child may have had more than one Finished Consultant Episode.
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