Andrew Livingstone
Northern News Services
Published Friday, December 19, 2008

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - The backlog of child dental surgeries plaguing Yellowknife and the NWT may finally start to decrease now that dentists again have access to Stanton Territorial Hospital.

Stanton Hospital's operating room will be open to dentists to perform surgical procedures on children one day a month. The hospital used to offer the service but stopped doing so due to scheduling issues, according to NWT Health Minister Sandy Lee.

As important as children's dental surgeries are, said Lee, "It's not an insured service, and when faced with overcapacity issues at the hospital in terms of the surgeries they needed to do, they had to give up something - and the first thing that went was not an insured service.

"It is inconvenient for parents to have to take their kids elsewhere to do this, and so I asked the department to review this and Stanton offered to give up days to dentists to do these procedures."

Lee said opening up the room one day a month doesn't cost the health department because the days being offered are ones previously booked for surgeries either cancelled or moved.

"The staff is already booked so the cost remains minimal or neutral," said Lee.

Dr. Hassan Adam of Adam Dental Clinic said there is a tremendous backlog of surgeries required among children - almost 130 in Yellowknife - and that the one day a month isn't enough.

"The one day a month doesn't even get through the backlog," he said, adding the backlog has been consistently large for many years. "It's a token. It won't make a difference. For every five we do a month, five more will be added."

Adam said the number of kids suffering with pain is high and he doesn't understand how Inuvik and Hay River get more days and Stanton doesn't.

"It's going to keep going on and keeping on top of it is going to be hard," he said. "If the (operating rooms) were made more available it would make a big difference."

Glen Abernethy, MLA for Great Slave Lake, said the opening of one day a month is a good start, but more needs to be done to help reduce the backlog of children needing surgery.

"These kids face future health problems if we don't deal with their dental issues in a timely manner," he said.

Abernethy said the backlog of dental surgeries required by children is around 300 territorially and many parents end up taking their kids south.

"They're swamped in Hay River and because they've got such a backlog in (the region of) South Slave they can't get to kids in Yellowknife," he said. "The longer we wait for these children to get fixed the more impact it's going to have on them in the future in a negative way."

Lee said the reason Yellowknife has only limited time available is because Stanton is an acute care facility and the only hospital in the territory capable of certain procedures.

"Dental surgery is one that a facility like Hay River can do and the community has shown great interest in having that hospital as a special provider for dental care in the South Slave area," she said. "What we have at Stanton we are totally maxed-out. That surgery unit and all the resources attached are at full capacity and it would be really difficult to add more services to it, especially ones that are not insured."

Stanton Hospital closes its operating rooms three times a year, each for a period of two weeks. Abernethy said it would serve the people of Yellowknife and the North if one of the two-week periods were to be opened to get dental surgeries completed. This would significantly decrease, if not remove the backlog completely, he said.

"It's not going to get us ahead. It's just going to stop the backlog from getting any larger and we're always going to have a huge outstanding," Abernethy said. "We need to do whatever we can to get rid of the backlog and then when that is done, maybe one day a month will be more than enough."