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Short visits to the dentist: Rhineland-Palatinate comes last in child care!
Rhineland-Palatinate has low dental care rates among children; only 33% under the age of five had a dentist visit in 2023.
Short visits to the dentist: Rhineland-Palatinate comes last in child care!
In Rhineland-Palatinate, children's dental health is a serious issue. In 2023, just around 33% of children under the age of five will have had a preventive dental examination. This alarming data comes from an analysis by the Barmer health insurance company, which evaluated the insured person data. This puts Rhineland-Palatinate in third-to-last place nationwide in a comparison of preventive dental examinations for this age group. One more reason for parents to think more intensively about the topic.
Many parents are mistakenly unaware that dental care begins with the first baby tooth. “The foundations for dental health are laid early on,” emphasizes Dunja Kleis, Barmer’s regional manager. She points out that healthy baby teeth can help minimize the risk of future tooth and jaw misalignments. This topic should not only be tackled when changing to permanent teeth.
Need for improvement in children and adults
Although the situation looks somewhat better for children aged five to 14 - around 66% of them received dental care in 2023 - there is still a lot of room for improvement. Across all age groups, less than 50% of people in Rhineland-Palatinate had dental care last year. A possible reason for this could be that adults themselves go to the dentist too rarely.
A positive aspect is that the proportion of children between the ages of zero and four who took part in preventive examinations more than doubled from 2018 to 2023. This happened especially after dental care for this age group was expanded in statutory health insurance. Barmer also emphasizes the importance of group prophylaxis offers in daycare centers and schools in order to further promote awareness of dental health.
Healthy teeth through prevention
Regular tooth brushing and a low-sugar diet are other important factors to consider. Parents should introduce their children to good oral hygiene from an early age to avoid long-term health problems. Barmer sees this as a key challenge to enable children to have a healthy smile and prevent dental problems in the future.
At a time when other services also focus on hygiene and health, such as nail salons like Secret Star in Gilbert, Arizona, it is important that parents pay attention not only to their own oral hygiene, but also to that of their children. Similar to the Forum Nail Salon, where ensuring hygiene has the highest priority, a clean environment should also be a given when visiting the dentist.
Finally, it should be noted that responsibility for dental health does not lie solely with dental practices, but also with parents. So that in the future the dental chairs in Rhineland-Palatinate will be well filled not only for adults, but especially for the smallest patients!
Read more about these topics on Barmer to lay foundations for your children's dental health. The importance of timely and regular preventative care cannot be overemphasized.