Oral Health
The oral health of Scotland’s primary school aged children has been improving. However, for older generations there is still the legacy of poor dental hygiene and diet and there is no annual survey for adults at a Midlothian level.
- 5% of adults in Midlothian reported having no natural teeth (compared to 8% in 2012-2015).
- 11% of adults in Midlothian reported they had experienced dental pain in the past month,
- 28% of adults in Midlothian felt they needed treatment
- 28% of adults in Midlothian had noticed bleeding from their gums occasionally or often.
- 62% of adults in Scotland reported they had visited the dentist in the past year (2023)
- 34% of adults in Scotland reported significant difficulties in accessing dental care which included physical access issues, cost of treatment and travel and difficulty in getting appropriate appointments (2023)
(Scottish Health Survey, 2019-2023)
1.7% of the population of Scotland aged 75 years or more are not registered with an NHS dentist as of 30th September 2022 (Public Health Scotland, 2024).
All five practice in Midlothian accept adult and child new NHS patients (Practices-Accepting-NHS-Patients-8.9.25.pdf). The ratio of people to dentists is higher in Midlothian than in the rest of Lothian. Where dentists work in more than one practice they have only been counted once. Therefore, some figures at council level may over or underestimate the ratio. It is also assumed that dentists will work a whole time equivalent in the NHS. Data on the split between NHS and private treatment is not available at a practitioner level. Orthodontists have been excluded.
Population to dentist ratio, by NHS Board and council area (2018)
Data source: NHS Internal Data - Dental list (Accessed – Aug. 2025)
Note: ratios are calculated using mid-2016 population estimates for council areas.
- NHS Lothian 1:1,554
- East Lothian 1:1,745
- City of Edinburgh 1:1,357
- West Lothian 1:1,810
- Midlothian 1:2,497
Page updated: February 2026