Helping kids sink teeth into studies

/Home/Specific Dental and Oral Health Concerns/Children and Dental Care

Helping kids sink teeth into studies
January 22, 2008
By ANDREW SKERRITT
St. Petersburg Times

He was only 7, but he summoned all his courage and strength.

Pain will make you do things you didn't think possible. And this little boy's tooth hurt so bad.

He took a piece of string and tried to pull the tooth himself. Instead, he just broke it off.

Jagged stumps stuck out from his tender gum. Now he needs a baby root canal and silver crowns to repair his decaying teeth, said pediatric dentist Natalie Carr, who on Friday examined the boy and other children at Lacoochee Elementary School.

Carr arrived in the Ronald McDonald Care Mobile truck. This was her first trip to the school in poor, rural eastern Pasco County. So many of these children need help. Without dental care, they risk disease at worst, poor self-esteem at best. Kids with crooked teeth don't smile a lot.

"By the time you get children at 4 or 5, it's too late," Carr said. "They've got lots of cavities. We want to prevent that."

In a perfect world, every family would have health and dental insurance. But in so many areas, children must endure throbbing toothaches. They miss school because of preventable illness.

A bright spot is the Ronald McDonald Care Mobile, a clinic on wheels operated by the University of Florida Department of Pediatrics and the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Tampa Bay Inc.

For almost a year, the clinic has been making monthly trips to Lacoochee Elementary, one of the poorest schools in the district. In 12 trips, the mobile medical team has seen 125 students; 37 have been referred for followup doctor visits.

Until now, though, the clinic's staff had focused mainly on the students' medical illnesses: juvenile diabetes, ear infections, asthma, skin infections and anemia.

But mobile unit director Jeannette Fleischer and school nurse Patty Barthle noticed the severe damage to some of the children's teeth. It was tough getting a dentist before Carr, a University of South Florida faculty member, volunteered.

"The medical problems were bad, but dental is even worse," said Barthle, a school nurse since 1980. Over the years, she has developed an informal network of local clinics and private doctors who take Medicaid payments to see many of her ill students.

Having the visiting mobile clinic means that students can get preliminary blood work and hearing tests and get medications and antibiotics. Students with chronic illnesses, such as asthma, can receive free regular medical checkups.

Keep the children healthy, Barthle preaches, and keep them in school.

It all is so elementary.