Adult Dental Health Survey 2009 - Summary report and thematic series

• In 2009, 94 per cent of the combined populations of England, Wales and Northern Ireland were dentate, that is had at least one natural tooth.
• 58 per cent of adults said that they had tried to make an NHS dental appointment in the previous three years. Of these adults, 92 per cent successfully received and attended an appointment.
• Seventy-five per cent of adults said that they cleaned their teeth at least twice a day and a further 23 per cent of adults said that they cleaned their teeth once a day.
• The mean number of teeth amongst dentate adults was 25.7, with the majority of dentate adults (60 per cent) having between 27 and 32 teeth. Dentate adults had an average of 17.9 sound and untreated teeth but this varied hugely with age.

A Welsh translation of the press release accompanying this report is available on request from the NHS Information Centre.

Designation as National Statistics

The United Kingdom Statistics Authority has designated these statistics as National Statistics, in accordance with the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 and signifying compliance with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics.

Designation can be broadly interpreted to mean that the statistics:

• meet identified user needs;
• are well explained and readily accessible;
• are produced according to sound methods, and
• are managed impartially and objectively in the public interest.

Once statistics have been designated as National Statistics it is a statutory requirement that the Code of Practice shall continue to be observed.

Correction to pre-release access list

Due to a processing error, the approved pre-release access list as originally published on 24 March 2011 was incorrect. A corrected version has been republished on 10 May 2011.

Accessing the Adult Dental Health Survey datasets

The datasets from the Adult Dental Health Survey are available from the UK Data Archive via their ESDS website.

• Note: it takes at least 4 months from publication for the latest datasets to be available.
• Full details on how to access the resources are available on the UK Data Archive sign up page.

If the data you require is unavailable on the UK Data Archive please contact us at enquiries@ic.nhs.uk