Naught for your comfort

A review of 51 children enrolled consecutively under the Dental Benefit Scheme in a private practice has shown that some children would have benefited from having bitewing radiographs at a much earlier age. Differences in dental development between girls and boys, and between children of European and Polynesian background mean that children vary greatly in the dental age when the first bitewing radiograph is taken, generally at enrollment in the General Dental Benefit Scheme. The decline in dental caries has made diagnosis and treatment planning more demanding, and this has exposed the deficiencies of the public programmes.