A growing dental crisis is leaving hundreds of Canadian children in pain and uncertainty, with some waiting nearly three years for surgery they desperately need.
Frankie Henderson, a 10-year-old from the Rusagonis area near Fredericton, N.B., has been languishing on a waiting list for almost two years. What began as a simple need for two fillings has spiralled into a much more serious situation—she now requires at least seven fillings, two to three extractions, and one cavity has already reached the nerve tissue in her tooth.
"It's 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? She might lose her teeth and those are her adult teeth, that's the frustrating part."
A System Stretched to Breaking Point
Frankie's struggle reflects a larger healthcare accessibility problem across Atlantic Canada. She has autism and an anxiety disorder, conditions that make dental work in a standard office setting impossible. She requires specialized care—the kind only available from Dr. Tom Raddall, New Brunswick's only board-certified pediatric dental specialist based in Moncton.
Raddall treats children with complex medical needs, extremely young patients, and high-risk cases that often require hospital operating rooms, general anesthesia, or intubation. The specialist's waiting list now exceeds 300 patients, with typical wait times stretching from one to two years. Some children treated in March 2026 had been waiting nearly three years for their procedures.
"Typically, that's resulting in my patients waiting one to two years. I treated some patients [in March] in the operating room here in Moncton who were waiting almost three years for treatment."
— Dr. Tom Raddall, Pediatric Dental Specialist
The Inequity Crisis
Data from New Brunswick's provincial surgical wait-time listings paints a bleak picture. At the Georges-L-Dumont University Hospital Centre in Moncton, only half of pediatric dental surgeries for fillings and extractions are completed within 300 days. The Edmundston Regional Hospital and Saint John Regional Hospital report similarly alarming timelines, with half of surgeries completed within 267 and 243 days respectively.
Perhaps most troubling: Raddall reports that children facing the longest waits tend to come from lower-income families—meaning the families already struggling most are the ones most likely to suffer consequences of delayed treatment.
Seeking Solutions Beyond Provincial Borders
Desperate for answers, Frankie's family has explored options outside New Brunswick. She is now on the waiting list for dental surgery at the IWK Health Centre in Halifax, where wait times are comparatively shorter.
The situation underscores a critical gap in Canada's healthcare system: specialized pediatric dental care for children with complex medical and developmental needs remains severely under-resourced. Operating-room time constraints have created a bottleneck that leaves vulnerable children suffering.
For families like the Hendersons, the wait continues—and so does the pain.
This article is based on reporting from CBC Health. Read the original story here.