'Patients in pain with nowhere to go': Thousands in Yorkshire call NHS 111 for dental help

Thousands of patients in Yorkshire "in pain with nowhere to go" dialled NHS 111 in search of dental treatment last month, as practices remain closed from the coronavirus lockdown, new figures reveal.
Thousands of patients have called 111 requiring dental treatment.Thousands of patients have called 111 requiring dental treatment.
Thousands of patients have called 111 requiring dental treatment.

With routine care suspended since March 25 due to the Covid-19 outbreak, the British Dental Association said the Government's response has left patients waiting in pain and dentists without adequate PPE.

No date has yet been given for the re-opening of dental practices across England, with only a few hundred acting as urgent care hubs in their place.

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Some 6,410 callers in April were recommended to seek help at one of these hubs by Yorkshire and the Humber 111 service, NHS England data shows.

The figure is also almost double the 3,450 in March, and 36 per cent more than the same month last year.

With all routine dentistry stopped for almost two months, around 400 urgent dental care hubs have been operating across the country in response.

More than 80,000 NHS 111 users across England were recommended dental help from the service in April alone – more than double that of the month before.

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However, the British Dental Association (BDA) said practices providing urgent care are currently seeing less than a quarter of the patients they did before the pandemic.

BDA chairman Mick Armstrong said: "In England routine care was shut down while an urgent care network was still on the drawing board. We are now seeing the results.

"Officials have found you cannot shut down a system that treats over 30 million people a year, without putting anything adequate in its place.

"Sadly, the pace left patients in pain with nowhere to go, while dentists waited weeks on PPE deliveries in empty clinics.

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"Government failure to support dentistry through the pandemic means many patients may not have practices to come back to."

The BDA said recent surveys have shown over 70 per cent of practice owners are financially sustainable for just three months or less, and will only be able to treat drastically reduced numbers when they do re-open because of social distancing.

NHS 111 services across England took 1.7 million calls in April, with 7 per cent of triaged calls being advised to see a dentist.

In Yorkshire and the Humber, this was the case for 5 per cent of calls.

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Health Secretary Matt Hancock has previously told MPs that reopening dentists practices has to be done in a safe way, particularly over the use of aerosols.

He said: "Dentistry by its nature requires close contact, and it can be an aerosol-generating procedure in certain circumstances, which makes it a higher risk to the dental practitioner – the dentist or nurse – and, in turn, to future patients, so we have to get this right.

"Emergency dentistry is available in dentistry hubs, which have been set up during the crisis. It is important to get this right, but it is also important to get dentistry back on its feet."