Prevalence of dental trauma of permanent anterior teeth in children visiting College of Dentistry/Hawler Medical University

Abstract

Background and objectives: The aim was to study the distribution of traumatic dental injuries in the permanent anterior teeth among 7-12 years old children treated in the Department of Pediatric Dentistry/ College of Dentistry at Hawler Medical University, Erbil, Iraq. Methods: In this retrospective clinical study the case records of 1868 patients were reviewed and only patients with traumatic dental injuries were included. Type of tooth injury was classified according to modified Ellis and Davey12 crown fracture. Data on age, gender, number of injured teeth and type of injury were also collected from the dental records for the period 2007-2009. Results: Records of 1868 examined children showed that the prevalence of traumatic dental injury was 4.5% (84). Of those 84 patients, 60.7 %( 51) were boys and 39.3 % ( 33) were girls with male/female ratio 1.55: 1. The highest frequency of tooth injuries occurred among 9-10 years old children. Single tooth injury was found in 84.5% of the cases, while 15.5% had two teeth injury. Traumatic injuries affecting teeth in the upper jaw were more frequent. The most frequent injuries were class II crown fracture (47.4%), followed by class III (40.2%), class IV (11.4%) and class I (1%) respectively. Conclusion: The prevalence of dental trauma is relatively low. More attention should be paid to preventive measures, which includes wearing mouthguards, especially in the early stages of psychophysical growth of male population.