Importance of Age One Dental Visits

Dental caries is a preventable disease with significant morbidity. If left untreated, it can lead to pain, infection, and life-threatening severe events. Multiple national health care organizations recommend that the first dental visit occurs by age one. Yet, some continue to challenge the theoretical, clinical, and scientific rationale for early preventive dental visits. The age one dental visit allows for the early prevention and identification of dental disease, maximizing the use of conservative, nonsurgical caries management techniques. Silver diamine fluoride (SDF) and fluoride varnish, for early cavity prevention and arrest. Dental caries remains the most common chronic disease of childhood, more than four times more prevalent than asthma. National surveys report that more than 50 percent of children still experience caries in their primary teeth. Racial and ethnic disparities persist in children's access to dental care, with higher disease prevalence in vulnerable populations, including those of low socioeconomic status (SES) and with limited resources. Among two to eight-year-old Hispanic children, the untreated disease's prevalence increased to nearly 70 percent over the last decade. Untreated dental disease in children can lead to significant pain, challenging emergency department (ED) visits, and millions of school and caregiver work hours lost each year, with uninsured children having more absences than their insured peers. Early dental visits can prevent suffering, reduce dollars spent on future surgical and emergency dental services, and maximize children's chances of growing up with healthy, happy smiles. Including dental services for children younger than three years old as part of the mandatory early and periodic screening diagnosis and treatment benefits and guaran-teeing competitive reimbursement for first preventive dental services are two ways to increase access to critical dental services for children beginning at age one.