Oral and Dental Health Knowledge and Attitudes among Parents of Children

Abstract

Objective: This study aims to evaluate parents’ knowledge and attitudes level on oral and dental health.
 Methods: One hundred and thirty parents of children aged 6-12 years, were invited to participate in the study. A 33-item questionnaire covering socio-demographic characteristics, dental attitude, dietary practices, tooth eruption, dental caries, and oral hygiene practices, was distributed to parents. The relationship between categorical variables was tested with the Chi-square test.
 Results: The sample comprised of 100 parents with a mean age of 37.1 ± 6.4. The knowledge and attitudes towards dental caries and oral health habits among parents did not differ significantly according to the parents’ gender, education level, or dental chair experience. There was a statistically significant difference in the responses of the first primary tooth and the first exfoliating primary tooth according to the gender of the parents (p=0.031, p=0.002, respectively). Although the education level of the parents did not affect the answers about the number of primary and permanent teeth, a statistically significant difference was found in the time of first primary tooth eruption (p=0.008).
 Conclusion: The study showed that parents do not have enough knowledge and awareness of dental caries and oral healthcare. Oral healthcare should be promoted as a part of general health and the awareness of the public should be increased.

Influence of parental dental health knowledge and practices on their child’s oral health

“…Surprisingly, around 9% of parents in the current study had never taken their child to a dentist, our figure slightly higher than the one reported (6%) by another study [16]. But our figure much less than 18% and 19% reported in India and Turkey studies respectively [13,19], and further less than that one reported in other study that 51% of parents haven't made dental visit [18]. This might be due to insufficient awareness about the significance of early dental maintenance.…”

“…[13]. However, same trend seen in other several studies, the majority of parents reported that visiting dentist only when need arises and the child has a toothache [11,[14][15][16][17][18][19].…”

“…Anyway, an Indian study reported only 30% of parents aware of total number of primary teeth [15]. Furthermore, less percentage was reported by other study, only 26% of the parents know the total number of primary teeth [19].…”