Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many children have been hospitalised needing treatment for dental decay in Lincolnshire in each of the last three years.

The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) publishes annual official statistics on tooth extractions in children aged between zero and 19 years old that take place in a National Health Service hospital setting in England. The following table shows the number of finished consultant episodes (FCEs) for tooth extraction with dental caries, also known as tooth decay, as the primary diagnosis code between 2021/22 and 2023/24, for children aged between zero and 19 years old in the Lincolnshire upper tier local authority:

Source: OHID’s annual statistics on tooth extractions zero to 19 year olds that take place in an NHS hospital setting in England, available at the following link:  
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hospital-based-tooth-extractions-in-0-to-19-year-olds

Notes:

1. Lincolnshire refers to the Lincolnshire upper tier local authority, the Lincolnshire County Council.
2. All sub-national FCE counts are rounded to the nearest five as per NHS Digital’s disclosure controls.
3. Figures show the number of FCEs, not the number of individual children who received these treatments, and therefore one child may have had more than one FCE.
4. A quality note on the data is available at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/analysis-of-tooth-extractions-in-hospital-methods-and-data-quality/data-quality-and-disclosure-control-for-hospital-based-tooth-extraction-data