The number one cause of hospital admissions among children is tooth decay.
This is correct for children aged five and over. For children aged one to 17 the top two causes of hospital admission in 2022/23 were viral infection and acute tonsillitis, then tooth decay.
“The number one cause of hospital admissions among children is tooth decay.
Shadow health secretary Wes Streeting told the Labour Party conference on 11 October that the number one cause of hospital admissions among children is tooth decay.
This seems to be true if you look at the data for children aged five to 17 in England. But if you include younger children then tooth decay is not the most common reason for under 18s being admitted to hospital.
Statistics on their own have limitations and the way they are presented is a crucial part of how they are interpreted and understood by the public. If data is presented without context or caveats, it can give an incomplete or misleading picture.
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Full Fact has approached Labour and Mr Streeting to ask what figures he was referring to but have not received a response..
NHS England publishes annual hospital admitted patient care activity data. The most recent figures show that in 2022/23 some 29,318 five- to 17-year-olds admitted to hospital had the primary diagnosis of dental caries—also known as tooth decay. This was the most common primary diagnosis in this age group. The data is provided broken down across seven different age brackets for those between birth and age 17.
Based on the individual age groups provided in the data, the five to nine-year-olds age group was the only one where tooth decay was the most common reason for being admitted to hospital.
When you include younger children, tooth decay is not the most common primary diagnosis of under 18s being admitted to hospital.
Looking at one- to 17-year-olds, viral infections and acute tonsillitis were the top two primary diagnoses in 2022/23, followed by dental caries. And when you include newborns, the most common reason was being in hospital when they are born.
In a press release trailing Labour’s plans for dentistry ahead of the conference, the party said that tooth decay was the most common reason for children aged six to 10 to be admitted to hospital.
During health questions in the House of Commons on 17 October, Mr Streeting also cited these figures, saying: “Across the country, the number one reason children aged six to 10 are admitted to hospital is tooth decay.”
This covers a slightly different age bracket to the NHS England data, but appears to come from an Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) report from February 2023.
This figure is based on an internal analysis of more granular NHS hospital episode statistics (the same data used for the NHS England publication on hospital admitted patient care activity). The OHID does not publish this underlying analysis.
Image courtesy of the House of Commons
After publishing this fact check, we wrote to Lucy Vickers, Head of Profession for Statistics at DHSC, to ask that the unpublished internal analysis is made publicly avaiable.
Ms Vickers is yet to respond.
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