Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether NHS England requires dental clinics to record the underlying medical cause of traumatic dental injuries in patient datasets; and what plans he has to introduce a specific recording category for seizure-related dental trauma.

NHS England's Dental Record Keeping Standards states that every clinical record should include the patient's presenting complaint and diagnosis, with the diagnosis expected to include the underlying cause. These standards apply to the recording of dental conditions generally, including cases where the presentation is due to underlying trauma.

Where a patient presents with dental trauma linked to epilepsy, the seizure-related cause would be expected to be recorded in the same way a clinician would record the cause of any other dental injury or condition. There are no current plans to introduce a separate recording category for seizure-related trauma, as the existing standards already require the underlying cause to be captured as part of the diagnosis. Further information can be found at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/dental-record-keeping-standards-a-consensus-approach.pdf