{"id":395321,"date":"2026-04-24T11:18:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T11:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/395321\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T11:18:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T11:18:07","slug":"n-b-child-still-waiting-for-dental-surgery-after-two-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/395321\/","title":{"rendered":"N.B. child still waiting for dental surgery after two years"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Frankie Henderson, a 10-year-old girl in Rusagonis on the outskirts of Fredericton, has been waiting nearly two years for what started out as just two dental fillings.<\/p>\n

She now needs at least seven fillings and two to three extractions, and one cavity has reached nerve tissue.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s getting worse now, like her front teeth are affected,” said Erica Henderson, Frankie’s mother. “What if we have to wait for another year or more?<\/p>\n

\u201cShe might lose her teeth and those are her adult teeth, that\u2019s the frustrating part.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Henderson said her daughter has autism and an anxiety disorder, which makes getting the procedure done in a general dentist’s office difficult. <\/p>\n

She was referred to Moncton-based Dr. Tom Raddall, New Brunswick’s only board-certified pediatric dental specialist.<\/p>\n

Raddall sees patients with complex medical needs, children who are very young or high-risk and sometimes must have their procedures done in a hospital, with general anesthetic or intubation.<\/p>\n

Frankie is now on the waitlist for surgery at the IWK Health Centre in Halifax, where the wait time is shorter. <\/p>\n

Hundreds waiting for surgery <\/p>\n

According to Raddall, Frankie isn\u2019t alone. More than 300 of his patients across New Brunswick are waiting for dental surgery.<\/p>\n

\u201cTypically, that’s resulting in my patients waiting one to two years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 5 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-395321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}