Awareness of Childhood Caries Among Parents in Andhra Pradesh

Abstract

Dental caries is the most common chronic disease of childhood, globally. Although dental caries' levels have been declining the world over, the problem of early childhood caries (ECCs) has remained unchanged in many areas of the world, especially the socially deprived.The survey is conducted among Parents in Andhra Pradesh. Self-structured questionnaires were prepared and circulated through an online portal, then the data collected, and results were tabulated. The results were collected and then analyzed through SPSS software. Descriptive statistical analysis was carried out and the chisquare test was used and the p-value was calculated.It was found that the parents knew that oral hygiene was important to general health but was unable to follow optimal oral hygiene practices. The reason for such poor maintenance and practice could be due to low educational low levels of awareness on oral hygiene practices, low economic status of the participants.There was a general lack of knowledge on methods of oral health maintenance even though the participants acknowledged that oral health was vital to general wellbeing. Routine dental camps should be conducted with clinicians demonstrating oral hygiene practices and performing checkups