Dentists across the US see 64% increase in emergency visits the day after St. Patrick’s Day.
A CNBC report (video below) on the post-Paddy’s Day phenomenon attributes it to “people behaving badly and getting their teeth knocked out.
“It’s not just a stereotype that people would do this, we have real data,” the report continues.
Sikka Software, a company that provides apps and tools to more than 10,000 dental practices, compared the average number of emergency dental visits on March 18 with the averages for the rest of the month.
They found that dentists in every single state, with the exception of Vermont, had a surge of emergency appointments on March 18 or on the Monday closest to St. Patrick’s Day when it falls on a weekend. March 18 is consistently one of the busiest days of the year for dentists, they reported, and the boom lasts a good two or three days after.
Eight states – Delaware, Mississippi, Maryland, Nebraska, Utah, Texas, Montana and Washington D.C. – see spikes of over 100%.
“Yes, dentists are very busy the day after we celebrate St. Patrick," Dr. Page Barden, a dentist in Georgia, commented on the report.
He said that he has seen patients who become clumsy and fall down, doing a face plant in the sidewalk," and others whose drunken encounters result “in them biting someone they have offended in the fist with their teeth."
Disheartening as it is to see cold, hard data that people do in fact act like drunken eejits on March 17 and get into bar brawls, there seems to be little correlation between a state’s Irish population and the surge in emergency dental care.
For example, in Delaware, the state with the highest increase (188%), only 11.4% of the population claims Irish ancestry.
Vermont, the only state with a decrease in urgent dental care on March 18 (-35%), has, at 17%, one of the highest Irish American populations.
The founder of Sikka Software told CNBC "We can see dentists offering a St. Patrick's Day emergency appointments special."
Comments