Correlation between early childhood caries and maternal caries status and influence of preventive educational counseling on children′ss. mutanslevels

Abstract

Aims: This study was carried out to correlate the relationship between early childhood caries and maternal caries status and to investigate the influence of preventive educational counseling on children's Streptococcus mutans levels. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted on 100 pairs of children of ≤6 years age and their mothers, who reported to the Department of Pedodontics and Preventive Dentistry, SGT Dental College, Gurgaon. The association between mother's education status and socioeconomic status of family were estimated through a self-structured questionnaire. Out of theses 100 children, a total of 30 children whose caries score was 4 or more than 4 were selected for S. mutans salivary level count using Mitis Salivarius Bacitracin agar media. The mothers of these 30 children were given a 30 min educational session regarding prevention of dental caries. Following this the salivary S. mutans levels were again estimated and comparison was done between baseline and posteducational counseling S. mutans levels using paired t -test. Results: Collected data was statistically analyzed using analysis of variance and paired t -test. There was no correlation between the dental caries status of children below and at 6 years of age with that of their mothers. There was an inverse relationship between the education level of mothers and caries status of their children ( P > 0.05). There was no relationship between the socioeconomic status of mothers and caries status of their children. There was a significant decrease in the salivary levels of S. mutans of children after preventive educational counseling of their mothers ( P Conclusion: It can be concluded that, mothers are responsible for children lifestyle behavior and habits and represent the primary information about oral health.