Long-Distance Dentistry Tested in Rochester Study ROCHESTER, NY (WXXI) - A study being launched by the Eastman Dental Center in Rochester hopes to fight tooth decay in young children by connecting them to dentists over the internet.

Teledentistry allows dentists to see inside the mouths of children at specially-equipped daycare centers in Rochester. The Eastman Dental Center has a five-year, half-million-dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health to find out if screening children who don't often get to the dentist this way can help head off tooth decay.

Doctor Dorota Kopycka-Kedzeriawski [dor-OH-ta kop-ITS-ka ked-jer-AV-skee] is leading the study. She says tooth decay in young children is a growing at about four percent a year nationally, and dentists aren't really sure why. Whatever the reasons, tooth decay has become a major reason for missing school. And it's worse in lower-income neighborhoods.

Rochester has the highest rate of child poverty in New York State. That's one reason for testing teledentistry in the city. The other is that Rochester already has six daycare centers equipped for "telemedicine" -- where pediatricians at Strong Hospital can diagnose children online as a nurse at the center handles the instruments.

Advantages include that children don't have to leave daycare unnecessarily, forcing their parents to leave work to take them to the doctor.

Kopycka-Kedzeriawski says they've added cameras that can look into children's mouths so dentists can see on the computer screen what's going on inside. She says they'll screen 500 pre-school children regularly over the next five years.

A pilot program run by the Eastman Dental Center last year found that more than 40 percent of 200 inner-city daycare children had cavities -- and 95 percent of them had never seen a dentist.
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