Fluoride Qld: Tooth decay linked to serious health problems

Oral health is not the only thing at risk for communities without fluoridated water, with tooth decay linked to other life-threatening conditions.

Cairns orthopaedic surgeon Dr Sarah Coll

• Fluoride: ‘Councils can pay’

The oral health of regional Queenslanders is not the only thing at risk for communities without access to fluoridated water, with tooth decay linked to life-threatening conditions such as stroke, heart disease and sepsis, experts warn.

The AMAQ’s Dr Sarah Coll, who is an orthopaedic surgeon in Cairns, painted a horrifying picture of some of the young patients seen every week in the public hospital.

“By the time the children present to a dentist they need what’s called a full oral clearance, which is where we remove all their teeth,” she said.

“Children are having all their teeth removed at the age of six, and then they come back at the age of 11 and have all their teeth removed again.

“These babies wake up in the recovery with blood pouring from their mouths, screaming. It is just so horrendous.”

Dr Coll said children who had their adult teeth removed were unable to be fitted for dentures until their mouth was adult sized.

“The problem then is they can’t eat meat, so they can’t chew, so they get nutritional deficiency, and they get stunted growth,” she said.

“They then struggle with chronic pain in their mouth, which affects their focus at school. It exacerbates their asthma. It exacerbates their diabetes, because they’re chronically infected, they can’t sleep, and they can’t concentrate. They feel socially embarrassed by their rotten teeth, and they get bullied and then their mental health suffers.”

Dr Coll said she was speaking with a respiratory physician recently who said he and his colleagues were admitting, on average, two tooth decay related pneumonia patients per week to hospital.

Tooth decay is linked to a litany of other serious health conditions.

“One of the most important things for us in a regional area is heart disease and poor dental health results in worsening of atherosclerosis, which is a big word for narrowed arteries,” she said.

“So you know, when we talk about heart attacks and we talk about strokes, those two conditions are much worsened by poor oral health.”

Dr Coll said regional Queensland had an extremely high rate of endocarditis – an infection affecting the lining of the heart and the heart valves.

Torres and Cape Hospital and Health Service public health medical officer Dr Allison Hempenstall said for people living in the Torres Strait seeing a dentist was incredibly difficult.

“All the outer islands, where over 4000 people live on, need to fly in or travel into Thursday Island in order to see a dentist … it’s very difficult to access dental care here,” she said.

“Water fluoridation would have a huge impact on their not only their oral health, but their overall health.”

She said fluoridation was cost effective, safe and a very simple public health intervention that could improve the health of the whole community.

“But in particular, in this area, where we’ve got some of the most disadvantaged Australians living,” she said.

“Poor oral health can contribute to other chronic diseases such as type two diabetes, obesity, and in our region in particular, we have the highest rates of acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease in all of Australia, and we know that dentition and good dental hygiene is incredibly important for preventing acute rheumatic fever, rheumatic heart disease and maintaining someone’s heart health.”

Originally published as Fluoride Qld: Tooth decay linked to serious health problems