LEVELS OF KNOWLEDGE AND MOTIVATION OF MAINTENANCE OF DENTAL AND ORAL HEALTH WITH DENTAL CARIES STATUS OF CHILDREN WITH DEAFNESS

Abstract

Background: Dental caries is more at risk for children with special needs. Children with physical abnormalities, one of which is deaf, namely children who experience a lack or loss of their sense of hearing and cause the child to experience obstacles in language development, this can affect education, so that children have low knowledge, especially in the field of dental and oral health This causes a high risk of developing dental and oral diseases. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between the level of knowledge and motivation for maintaining oral and dental health with dental caries status in deaf children at the SLB Yayasan Bahagia Tasikmalaya City. Material and Methods: Quantitative research method with a cross sectional approach on 14 children with hearing impairment at the SLB Yayasan Bahagia Tasikmalaya City, by administering a knowledge and motivation questionnaire, and conducting a DMF-T/def-t examination to determine the dental caries status of the respondents. Result: Respondents with less knowledge level 8 (57.1%), weak motivation 10 (71.4%), and high caries status criteria were 9 (64.3%). Spearman correlation test on the variable level of knowledge with the variable dental caries status with the results of a significance value of 0.000 <0.05, which means that there is a relationship between the level of knowledge and the dental caries status of deaf children at the Happy Foundation Special School, Tasikmalaya City, and on the motivation variable for maintaining oral health. with the dental caries status variable with a significance value of 0.000 <0.05, which means that there is a relationship between the motivation to maintain oral health and the dental caries status of deaf children at the SLB Yayasan BahagiaTasikmalaya City. Conclusion: The results of this study indicate that the lower the level of knowledge, the weaker the motivation for maintaining oral health.