Counseling role of primary care physicians in preventing early childhood caries in children with congenital heart disease.

Zifeng Liu,Jiaxuan Lu,Wei Zhao,Hui Lu,Dongsheng Yu,Lijie Zhou,Jing Yang

doi:10.3390/ijerph111212716

Abstract

The dental health of preschool children with congenital heart disease (CHD) is usually poor, which may contribute to the development of infective endocarditis (IE). Primary care physicians play an important role in providing access to preventive dental services, particularly for preschool children. The object of this study was to provide epidemiologic evidence for the impact of primary care physicians’ (PCP’s) counseling role on early childhood caries in children with CHD in Guangzhou, China, which might guide future caries prevention to decrease the risk of IE in children with CHD. A hospital-based, case-control study was performed, which contained 100 children with newly diagnosed early childhood caries and 100 matched (sex and age) children without dental caries. All of the subjects were diagnosed with CHD at birth and recruited from Guangdong Cardiovascular Institute from 2012 through 2013. A conditional multivariate logistic-regression model was used to assess the associations between PCPs’ role and early childhood caries with a significance level of 5%. Our findings revealed that mother’s education level (OR = 0.36, CL = 0.14–0.92) and knowledge, being educated on the relationship between CHD and infective endocarditis (OR = 0.48, CL = 0.25–0.94) and the impact of oral health on infective endocarditis (OR = 0.37, CL = 0.18–0.79) by the PCP were associated with early childhood caries. PCPs played an important role in preventing early childhood caries among preschool children with CHD in Guangzhou, China.

Highlights

Congenital heart disease (CHD) is one of the most common types of birth defects, with a mean incidence of approximately 8–10 cases per 1,000 live births [1,2]
On the basis of the results of the screening, the Primary care physicians (PCPs) would refer the child to a dentist or would undertake counseling for reasons that included health promotion and parental education [9]
Role in children with congenital heart disease (CHD), which goes against the work of caries prevention. We performed this case-control study to provide exploratory epidemiologic evidence for the PCPs’ counseling role in preventing early childhood caries (ECC), which might guide future caries prevention to decrease the risk of infective endocarditis (IE) in children with CHD

Summary

Introduction

Congenital heart disease (CHD) is one of the most common types of birth defects, with a mean incidence of approximately 8–10 cases per 1,000 live births [1,2]. Some research has shown that CHD represents a predisposing cardiac condition for the development of infective endocarditis (IE) [3,4], approximately 15% of which was caused by oral organisms and occurred after a recent dental treatment [5,6]. Primary care physicians (PCPs), as community-based primary care medical providers, play an important role in providing access to preventive dental services, for preschool children. According to the previous research, screening, referral and counseling were the traditionally recommended interventions for the PCP to prevent dental caries in preschool children in some developed countries [9]. For the lack of screening equipment and an oral referral system in most Chinese community clinics, the counseling role of PCPs in preventing dental caries is important

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion