The University of Washington and Children’s Hospital & Regional Medical Center has announced plans to open a new comprehensive pediatric dental center with room to treat low-income children.

The center, called the Washington Dental Service Building for Early Childhood Oral Health, will have 12 dentists, 38 dental chairs and two surgery rooms.

Joel Berg, chair of UW’s pediatric dentistry department will run the new center. He said the plans would allow for more jobs.

“All staff at the UW Pediatric Dentistry Center and at Children’s will transfer, but that won’t fill all the slots,” Berg said. “This will open up new practicum slots for current students, especially for those in Public Health.”

The new facility, which will be located in Magnuson Park, will have a approximately 40,000 students, more than double the number currently covered. Medicaid currently covers a majority of the kids treated at the UW.

“The center will bring together the expertise of Children’s and UW, to treat patients on a local level … and conduct research to develop models [for pediatric dentistry] we can use across the nation,” Berg said.

The renovation will cost $17 million, $10 million of which will be covered by UW. Washington Dental Service and the Washington Dental Service Foundation will pay $5 million and Children’s will pay another $1 million.

In the press release, Dr. Sanford Melzer, Children’s senior vice president for strategic planning, noted that the generous gift from Washington Dental Service provides the basis for an important joint effort between Children’s and the UW School of Dentistry that will dramatically improve the dental care of children in our region.

“One common problem for children that most people don’t know about is Early Childhood Caries. … It can begin to appear at six months, when the teeth are developed. Caries can lead to tooth decay and cavities. … As a dentist I’ve seen children ages 2 or 3 who have up to 15 cavities. The cause of this is a combination of diet, carbohydrate consumption [and] frequency of feeding.” Berg also added that not every child will have this problem.

Untreated dental conditions can lead to serious infections, speech problems, malnutrition and other health problems.

The UW’s current pediatric dental clinic, located at its School of Dentistry, will close after the new center’s opening, now slated for mid-2010. The new center will be equipped to handle cases that the UW now can’t, Berg said, such as outpatient oral surgery that requires anesthesia.

Berg said he thinks the biggest challenge will also be their greatest opportunity. “It will be hard reaching out to the students who aren’t currently seeing dentists.”

One of the goals with the new center is to encourage parents to take children for their first checkup by age 1. “This has been a recommended for a while now.”

[Reach reporter Chris Paredes at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]