Do Early Dental Visits Reduce Treatment and Treatment Costs for Children?
Since the late 1980s, promoting health and scheduling a dental visit for children by the age of one has been promoted in the United States by dental and medical organizations, government agencies, and advocacy groups.
Prevention strategies such as a first-year dental visit aim to avoid or slow the development of caries in children by eliminating or reducing the factors which cause the disease. Yet by the year 2000, one study showed that only
3% of one-year olds had visited a dentist. Additionally, there have been few studies to show that early intervention programs are both clinically and cost effective. With this study, the authors postulate that early dental intervention in high caries-risk children reduces the required treatment and associated costs during childhood.
Beginning in January 2012, the authors reviewed data provided by Church Street Health Management (CSHM) in Nashville, Tennessee. CSHM operates clinics across the United States, primarily serving children from low-income families covered by state Medicaid programs. Using a single health care company with uniform procedures
provided better source of data than an aggregate study of independent dental health providers. Twenty treatment centers from eight states were selected for the study. To be included in the subject count, children must have been seen at least once a year in the same center over a period of eight years. The subjects were divided into early and late starter groups. The early starters were children having their first dental visit at an age of less than four years. Late starters had their first dental visit at age four or older. Treatment was divided into the categories of fillings, crowns, pulpotomies and extractions. The authors studied the treatments required for the two groups and translated the differences in treatment into actual dollar amounts.