Dental Hospitalization of Victorian Children from 2001-02 to 2017-18

Objectives: To analyse changes in Potentially Preventable Dental Hospitalizations (PPDH) of 0-9 year old children in Victoria, Australia, from 2001-02 to 2017-18.
Methods: Data on PPDHs for the years 2001-02 to 2017-18 were obtained from the Victorian Admitted Episode Dataset (VAED). The VAED includes data on all admissions to Victorian hospitals. Dental conditions considered not preventable were excluded such as the extraction of impacted teeth. Rates were generated using Australian Bureau of Statistics estimated resident population counts.
Results: There were a total of 77,559 PPDHs recorded for the 17 years. The PPDH rate decreased from 7.9 to 6.1 per 1,000 population. PPDHs were the highest cause of all Potentially Preventable Hospitalizations (PPH) for this age group for most of the period. There were no significant differences in gender rates except between 2003-04 and 2011-12 when girls had lower rates. While rates for 0-4 and 5-9 year-olds were similar in 2001-02 (7.9 and 8.0), the younger age group rate decreased by 46% to 4.3 and the older age group rate remained the same. Among 0-4 year olds, rural rates decreased by 61% (13.2 to 5.2) compared to 32% in Melbourne, Victoria’s capital city (5.9 to 4.0). Among 5-9 year olds, rural rates decreased by 19% (12.4 to 10.1) but increased by 20% in Melbourne (6.0 to 7.2). A social gradient was consistent with children living in disadvantaged quintiles having up to twice the PPDH rates of children from least disadvantaged quintiles. From 2013-14 there was a small increase (from 47% to 49%) in the proportion of PPDHs conducted in the private versus the public sector.
Conclusions: PPDHs of Victorian 0-9 year olds were the highest cause of all PPH admissions for most years between 2001-02 and 2017-18. There were variations by gender, age, geographic area and public-private sector admissions with the social gradient persisting.