Parental Awareness about Oral Health Preventive Care and its Relation to DMFT Index in Visually Impaired Children

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM: Oral health care for children with visual impairment is challenging for health service providers. Gaining information about parental awareness in this regard can be a basis for health planning and use of preventive services. PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to evaluate parental awareness about the importance of preventive care and its relationship with DMFT index in visually impaired children. MATERIALS AND METHOD: This cross-sectional and descriptive-analytical study was carried out on 50 parents of children with visual impairment referring to schools of the blind children aged 8-14 years in Isfahan in 2017-2018. Parental awareness was measured by knowledge questionnaire. DMFT index of first permanent molar was recorded by examination. Data were analyzed using Spearman correlation coefficient, Pearson correlation and T-test in SPSS 22 software. The level of significance was considered less than 0.05. RESULTS: The mean score of parental awareness about significance of preventive care was 68.4±15.5. Mean DMFT in the studied children was 2.40±1.32 and highest score was related to decayed tooth, followed by filled tooth. There was no significant relation between parental knowledge and mean DMFT (p= 0.30), while there was revers relation with number of extracted teeth (p= 0.02) and direct relation with number of filled tooth (p= 0.04). CONCLUSION: Parental awareness generally did not show significant relationship with DMFT, while by increasing their knowledge the number of missed teeth was decreased and the number of filled teeth was increased in visually impaired children.