The Eastman Dental Center has secured more than $532,000 to explore a new way to look at kids' teeth. It's called teledentistry. Dentists use a camera to take pictures of teeth to easily spot cavities and other problems.
With the grant money, Eastman Dental Center will look inside more than 500 Rochester city school preschoolers’ mouths, and then recommend the next step if need be. Good oral health is critical at an early age and sometimes it's the last thing on a parent's mind.
"Some of them they are not aware of the problem, some of them have so many different problems in their lives that it may be the teeth are not on the radar screen and we would like to change that a little bit," says Dr. Dorota Kopycka-Kedzierawski of Eastman Dental.
Last year, Eastman Dental Center launched a pilot teledentistry initiative to check 200 young kids in Rochester and found 95 percent of them had never seen a dentist.
