Dear LPG,

Now that thoughts of the actual Covid-19 pandemic are slowly finding their way a little further down from the number one spot in the top ten of current affairs news items, there are so many other things ready to take its place at the top of the charts.  We are busy getting back to normal as best we can but for many of us the problems we now face are so often the ones that that very pandemic have left us with.

One such problem coming to the fore at the moment is that of getting our teeth dealt with.   We all know that dentists have been forced to scale down their work because of the close proximity needed during any such consultation, and more than a year when keeping our distance was the one thing that we could do to protect ourselves, lying in a dentist’s chair under his gaze with your mouth wide open, no matter how much PPE and how many masks he or she might be wearing.  Getting dental treatment has had to be a thing that many of us only did if it was vital.

But a year and a half on, many of us have mouths which need serious help and repair even if there has been no severe pain involved.  This got me thinking and looking at the internet where I have found some worrying information.

People in need of dental surgery could be forced to wait for two years for care. According to a poll of 300 dental surgeons carried out by the facility of Dental Surgeons, 39% think the backlog caused by the pandemic will take a year to clear while 19% believe it will be more than two years.

I just wondered, when the survey was conducted, how many of the participants saw patients who had serious toothache. Why?  Because when I had toothache I thought I was going to die. The pain was like nothing I experienced before and caused me to cry like a baby.

While I know that covid-19 has left us with many backlogs, I hope that this one will be kind to those in real dental pain.

Gloria Brown, Camberwell.

Gloria offers evidence of her finding…

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