After the death of a 12-year-old Prince George's County boy whose tooth infection spread to his brain, Maryland lawmakers recently set aside millions of dollars to expand dental care for children.
The added funds, which will be used to boost payments to dentists who treat Medicaid children and help expand public dental care in underserved areas, are part of a long-term strategy to provide more dental care to poor children throughout the state.
But, for the most part, dental care for seniors has not been a high priority.
FOR THE RECORD - An article in yesterday's A section included a garbled word and an incomplete paragraph. It should have read:
About a quarter of adults age 60 and older no longer have their natural teeth, experts say, and many older adults who do keep their teeth suffer from health problems such as pain, cavities, shifting teeth and receding gums, to name a few.
This month, the General Assembly increased state funding in an effort to expand dental care for poor children.
THE SUN REGRETS THE ERROR
"Access to oral health services for seniors continues to be a challenge in Maryland," said Harry Goodman, who directs the Office of Oral Health for the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
He said the state does a number of things to try to address the challenges, including the funding of clinical services at many local health departments that make payment arrangements based on income.
Another concern, experts say, is the shortage of dentists who specialize in the treatment of older people.
Historically, a "very low percentage" of dental students go into geriatric dentistry, said Dr. Christian Stohler, dean of the University of Maryland Dental School.
"You can count them on one hand," he said.
Stohler called seniors a "clearly underserved" population and said dental schools have previously "not articulated [senior care] as a challenge."
But that may be changing, Stohler said, as those in the health care field recognize that older people will occupy more and more chairs in dentists' offices.
The UM Dental School, for example, has begun talks with Govans Ecumenical Development Corp. (GEDCO), a nonprofit organization that built Stadium Place - a mixed-income retirement community in the Ednor Gardens-Lakeside neighborhood - about opening a dental clinic on the site. The aim is to help meet the needs of the seniors who live there and also to provide hands-on training for students in geriatric dentistry.
"It would give the dental school the ability to have a unique environment where we specifically focus on the elderly," Stohler said. "We would actually enrich education and provide our students with the competency to be able to deal with the elderly, because this is going to be a major part of what they do in the coming years."
