Second Opinion: A Call to Action

In the March 1, 2007, article “For Want of a Dentist,” The Washington Post reported, “By the time 12-year-old Deamonte Driver’s toothache got any attention, bacteria from an abscess had spread to his brain, doctors said. After two operations and more than six weeks of hospital care, the Maryland boy died.” The dental community has been all a-buzz about 12-year-old Deamonte Driver, who died of complications stemming from an untreated dental infection. The newspaper article reported that Driver’s death certificate listed two conditions associated with brain infections: “meningoencephalitis” and “subdural empyema.”

Similarly, in the March 2, 2007, article “Abscess Claims Life of Harrison Six-year-old” in Mississippi’s Clarion Ledger, “Alexander ‘Alex’ Callender, six, died from an abscess where two teeth had been removed from his lower jaw, county coroner Gary Hargrove said. He went into shock from the infection and his body shut down, Hargrove said after an autopsy Friday.” The story continues, “The bus, carrying 44 students home from Lizana Elementary, had only gotten about a mile from school when Callender collapsed, Harrison County Superintendent Henry Arledge said. Both the driver and a ninth-grade student attempted to revive Callender with CPR before an ambulance arrived. Bonnie McDonald, Callender’s teacher, spent much of Friday explaining to her class what happened to him. McDonald said now some students will have access to a CPR class if they’d like to take it. ‘I think that’s sort of a positive thing that came out of this,’ McDonald said.”

What did not make the newspapers are stories of two children in North Carolina who recently died from dental infections, one of whom was only four years old. How many other children have died from oral infections that have gone unpublished? Worse yet, how many children have died from dental-related infections, yet the cause of death was not even attributed to the dental infection due to a lack of knowledge of the oral-health/systemic-health connection? The only positive news in these articles is that the hospitals recognized the connection to tooth decay and people are talking about it.

The shocking reality of these stories is that we in the dental profession know that dental disease is a transmissible, preventable disease. Surgeon General David Satcher’s landmark 2000 report on oral health in America, the 2003 National Call to Action to Promote Oral Health, the surgeon general’s Conference on Children and Oral Health and the Healthy People 2010 oral health objectives for the nation have all created awareness and served as wake-up calls to oral health professionals, policymakers, child advocates and parents to begin addressing the issue of a preventable problem that plagues America’s children regarding oral health and access to dental care. In spite of these reports, America’s children are still dying from dental disease in 2007. The death of a child tends to bring issues to the forefront.

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 1999-2002 survey data selected by states reveals that nearly four-million preschool age children are affected by dental disease; that is almost one third of the nation’s preschool population. The data also reveals that the prevalence of dental decay in children ages two-to-five has increased 15.2 percent. Driver’s and Callender’s stories could be the story of any economically disadvantaged child in America.