Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what baseline data his Department holds on the number of hospital tooth extractions among 5-9 year olds in (a) Milton Keynes and (b) Buckinghamshire.

The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) publishes annual official statistics on tooth extractions, which include five- to nine-year-olds, that take place in a National Health Service hospital setting in England. The following table shows the number of finished consultant episodes (FCEs) for all tooth extractions and for tooth extraction with dental caries, also known as tooth decay, as the primary diagnosis code, for the 2023/24 financial year, for children aged five to nine years who reside in Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes:

Source: OHID’s annual statistics on tooth extractions for 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. Buckinghamshire refers to the local authority, Buckinghamshire Council;
2. Milton Keynes refers to Milton Keynes lower tier local authority, Milton Keynes City Council;
3. al sub-national FCE counts are rounded to the nearest five as per NHS Digital’s disclosure controls;
4. 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; and
5. 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