The First Dental Visit

Abstract

Oral health is a vital part of overall infant health. An early dental visit is important in rendering prevention oriented inter­vention and parental counselling regarding the oral health. To assess the age and common chief complaint of the children in their first dental visit. This was a retrospective study done using case records of 842 children, who reported to the Depart­ment of Pedodontics and Preventive Dentistry, chitwan medical college. The age groups were divided into four categories; less than 3 years, 3-6years, 7-11 years and 12-14 years. The various chief complaints of patient were categorized as follows; routine check up, dental caries, dental pain, deposits/bad breath, malocclusion, unerupted ,missing or extra tooth, oral habits, trauma, orientation to prevention and others (cleft lip, palate, natal/neonatal teeth, mobile teeth, soft tissue lesions and oth­ers). The age group and the most common complaint at the first dental visit were assessed. Majority of children who visited the dentist were of age 7-11 years with the most common reason for their visit being pain followed by dental caries. None of the children visited for regular check up within 6 months of eruption of first tooth, though few children of that age group visited the dentist for other reasons like cleft lip/palate, natal/ neonatal tooth etc. The reason behind the first dental visit is when there is a problem. The most common age group to visit dentist was 7-11years with the commonest reason for their visit being pain and dental caries. It can be concluded that awareness and knowledge regarding the first dental visit is almost nil among the parents of this region. Journal of Chitwan Medical College 2013; 3(4); 30-33 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/jcmc.v3i4.9551

Evaluation of Pediatric Patient's Age, Behaviors, and Reasons for the First Dental Visit in Edirne, Turkey: a Cross-Sectional Study

“…In the present study, only 0.6% of the children were under 1 year of age. An FDV at less than 3 years of age was reported in 3.00-40.50% of the population in previous studies (13,(19)(20)(21), whereas the rate was 5.5% in the present study. Other reports have stated that most of the children were aged between 6 and 9 years (12,19) or 3 and 6 years (13,15) at FDV.…”

“…Studies reporting dental caries as the most common cause reported that 34.9-59.9% of the FDVs were due to caries (13,18,21). Studies reporting tooth pain as the most common cause reported that 33.1-34.9% of the FDVs were due to pain (12,14,15,20). These two reasons constituted 42.6-61.1% of the reasons for the FDV (12,14,15,20,21).…”

First dental visit: Age, reason, and experiences of Saudi children

“…It is really astonishing to know that in various previous researches[ 19 20 ] carried out in other parts of the world, the age of 7–11 years and 6–12 years was being reported as the age for the first dental visit for their children. In a yet another study conducted in Bulgaria, the researchers noted that the study participants did not take their children to dentist earlier of the age of 1 year and they only visited the dentist in case their children suffered from dental caries or its complication.…”

“…These results were in accordance with previous studies, wherein the main reasons of children's first dental visit were pain and dental caries. [ 19 27 ]…”

Assessment of the Age of First Dental Visit among Dental Students in Nagpur, Maharashtra, India: A Cross-sectional Study

“…In the present pioneer study among the dental students, 78.7% of them had had a visit to a dentist (Table 1), with only 2.6% visiting the dentist at an early age, i.e., 0 to 5 years, and 44.4% (188 out of 423) visited the dentist only after joining the dental college when they were older than 17 years of age (Table 2), thus exhibiting low awareness among the study population. Considering other studies carried by Meera et al, 8 which estimated the age of first dental visit to be more than 6 years, Ghimire 9 found it to be in the age group of 7 to 11 years, and Atulkar et al 10 reported that most of the subjects enrolled in their study had not visited the dentist until 17 years of age. It was found that the most common reason for visiting the dentist was caries followed by routine dental checkup, irregular teeth, and tooth pain, for various other reasons, fracture/trauma, and ulcers in the oral cavity ( Table 3), indicating that the visits were for interception rather than prevention of diseases.…”