Abstract
Objective: To determine the children's primary dental treatment needs reported by the parents and pediatric dentists . Material and Methods: 125 children (36 girls and 89 boys) and their parents participated in this study. The children’s decayed-missing-filled teeth/teeth surfaces scores were recorded. A questionnaire about their children’s primary dental treatment needs was conducted with the parents. Shapiro-Wilk test was used to test the normality of the data. Kruskal-Wallis test was used to compare the clinical findings according to the categorical variables. The Chi-Square test was used to compare the categorical data. Also, multiple linear regression analysis was performed to determine the effect of some variables on children’s dmft/DMFT scores. The significance level was accepted as p<0.05. Results: The average age of the children who participated in the study was 7.59 ± 2.36 years. The main reason for applying to the paedodontics clinic was dental caries (38.4%), followed by dental pain (33.6%). As for the primary dental treatment needs, 28% of the parents said they needed dental filling, while 19.2% said they needed orthodontic treatment. According to the pediatric dentists, while the treatment rate of dental caries was 47.2% as the primary treatment need, it was only 4.8% for the orthodontic treatments . Conclusion: Turkish children who were admitted to paedodontics clinics were too old and dental caries and dental pain were the most common reasons for these visits to the clinics. The children's needs for primary treatment varied according to parents and pediatric dentists. There is a need for more comprehensive studies about the subject.
Highlights
Dental caries is one of the most common chronic diseases in pediatric patients [1]
It is recommended by the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD) [4] and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) [5] that parents should take their children to the first dental examination at the age of 12 months at the latest to prevent the formation and adverse effects of early childhood caries (ECC) in children
Mika et al [6] reported that the average age in 320 children who visited the dentist for the first time was 3.79 ± 1.82 years, Daou et al [7] reported that the average age in 220 children who visited the paedodontics clinic for the first time was 4.24 ± 1.35 years, and Olatosi et al [8] reported that the average age in 1551 children who visited the paedodontics clinic for the first time was 7.9 ± 3.7 years
Summary
Dental caries is one of the most common chronic diseases in pediatric patients [1]. The prevalence of early childhood caries (ECC) is gradually increasing in developing countries such as Turkey [2]. Growthdevelopment retardation due to pain, eating and sleep disorders, the presence of a constant focus of infection in the mouth, the fact that they lead to caries in permanent dentition, and the adverse psychological effect resulting from aesthetic anxiety are among the problems brought about by ECC [3] It is recommended by the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD) [4] and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) [5] that parents should take their children to the first dental examination at the age of 12 months at the latest to prevent the formation and adverse effects of ECC in children. It is observed in the studies that parents take their children to the dentist only when they feel pain and discomfort [11,12], which is caused by reasons such as geographical factors, parents' low education levels, and low awareness of the need for dental treatment [10,13]
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