No abstract

No abstract

Visual attention is a significant gateway to a child's mind, and looking is one of the first behaviours young children develop. Untreated caries and the resulting poor dental aesthetics can have adverse emotional and social impacts on children's oral health-related quality of life due to its detrimental effects on self-esteem and self-concept. Therefore, we explored preschool children's eye movement patterns and visual attention to images with and without dental caries via eye movement analysis using hidden Markov models (EMHMM). We calibrated a convenience sample of 157 preschool children to the eye-tracker (Tobii Nano Pro) to ensure standardisation. Consequently, each participant viewed the same standardised pictures with and without dental caries while an eye-tracking device tracked their eye movements. Subsequently, based on the sequence of viewed regions of interest (ROIs), a transition matrix was developed where the participants previously viewed ROI informed their subsequently considered ROI. Hence, an individual's HMM was estimated from their eye movement data using a variational Bayesian approach to determine the optimal number of ROIs automatically. Consequently, this data-driven approach generated the visual task participants' most representative eye movement patterns. Preschool children exhibited two different eye movement patterns, distributed (78%) and selective (21%), which was statistically significant. Children switched between images with more similar probabilities in the distributed pattern while children remained looking at the same ROI than switching to the other ROI in the selective pattern. Nevertheless, all children exhibited an equal starting fixation on the right or left image and noticed teeth. The study findings reveal that most preschool children did not have an attentional bias to images with and without dental caries. Furthermore, only a few children selectively fixated on images with dental caries. Therefore, selective eye-movement patterns may strongly predict preschool children's sustained visual attention to dental caries. Nevertheless, future studies are essential to fully understand the developmental origins of differences in visual attention to common oral health presentations in children. Finally, EMHMM is appropriate for assessing inter-individual differences in children's visual attention.

Traumatic dental injuries (TDI) affect around one-third of preschool children. 1 Falls have been reported as the most common aetiology of trauma in the primary dentition at 76%, with 98% of affected teeth being the maxillary central incisors. 2 Typical outcomes of TDIs in the primary dentition include fractures and discolouration, which may be discerning to the eye of the beholder.The psychosocial impacts of TDIs are unique to each individual and are based on the resulting consequences. For example, Goncalves et al. 3 in 2017 stated that approximately 15% of children in their study, aged 2 to 5 years, had an aesthetic impairment following TDIs, as reported by their parents, with tooth discolouration having the most significant aesthetic impact. Cortes et al. 4 in 2002 reported that 12-to 14-year-old children with untreated TDI were 20 times more likely to report a negative effect on their daily lives

Traumatic dental injuries (TDIs) such as subluxations of primary teeth can have significant consequences on their developing successors. The purpose of this report is to present a 3-year-old boy who encountered subluxation injuries to his primary incisors which subsequently had an unusual consequence on the permanent successor. On the day of the TDI, based on clinical and radiographic examinations, a diagnosis of subluxation of teeth 52, 51 and 61 was made. By age 5, the patient reported that tooth 51 had exfoliated, and consequently, tooth 11 had erupted into the oral cavity, but it was very loose. Eventually, the patient lost the crown of tooth 11 during his routine daily activities. Furthermore, radiographic examination at age 11 revealed a small root-like structure in the tooth 11 region. It is very unusual to have premature loss of a permanent incisor following subluxation to its predecessor. Therefore, the present case serves as a good example to emphasize that even minor TDIs are of considerable importance as they may lead to unexpected consequences.