Being a dentist can be an icky job, requering a lot of patience, admiration, and most importantly skill. With so many factors to think about, we’ve developed a list of some of the most essential dentistry stats and facts to know. Here we go.
Dentistry Statistics You Need to Know
- The North of England are the most diligent when it comes to their oral health.
- 49% of adults did not see an NHS dentist in the last 24 months, which is quite astonishing — according to ArabiaMD. Be sure to visit website to know more about it.
- 11.4 million treatments in total were delivered to children throughout the last year.
- Extractions were still a common reason for admissions between 2014 and 2015, with 63,000 under 19-year-olds heading to the hospital for that purpose throughout this period.
- Nearly half (46%) of all adults aged 30 years or older show signs of gum disease.
- 42% of children age 2 to 11 have had dental caries in their primary teeth. Boys have them more often than girls, and those above the poverty line have them less often than those below the poverty line.
- More dentists these days are female, compared to the profession 10 years ago. However, the dental profession still struggles with racial diversity.
- 2% of the populartion said “I have never had a routine check-up”.
- 58% of people think access to NHS dentistry has got worse in the last decade, with 40% saying it is now “much more difficult”. Only 7% say it is easier.
- The total number of dental surgeries offering NHS treatment has fallen from 9,661 in 2014-2015 to 8,408 in 2019-2020. A Freedom of Information request sent to the Care Quality Commission also showed that the number of practices that closed between 2019-20 and 2020-21 increased by 13% from 843 to 949. (FOI request, CQC, 2021).
- 63% of respondents said that they believe routine, nonurgent dentistry should be a priority for the government. When asked if urgent dental care should be a priority of
the government, 84% stated it should be a high priority, 44% of which said it should be a very high priority. - Although we are keeping more of our teeth as we age, 73% of people have one or more missing back teeth and 7.6% of people had one or more missing front teeth (National Dental Epidemiology Programme for England, Oral health survey of adults attending general dental practices, Public Health England, 2018).
- 25% of people in the North East have been to the dentist in the last 6 months, compared to 39% of people in the South East.
- People in the North East are 15% more likely than those in the South East to have not received any type of dental care since the start of the pandemic (58% vs 43%).
- Although oral health has improved in the last thirty years, oral health inequalities have widened. In 2008, the proportion of children with dental decay was 2.9x higher in the most deprived than the least deprived areas. In 2019, this is now 3.8x higher.