The impact of parents’ fears of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on children’s visits to pediatric dental offices in Iran

PURPOSE: This study aimed to investigate the effect of parents’ fears of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on pediatric dental visits. METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, conducted from July 2020 to August 2020, 500 parents of children who had visited pediatric dental offices were randomly selected. Parents were given a questionnaire containing 33 questions, which included three parts: (1) demographic characteristics, (2) dental problems scale, and (3) fear of SARS-CoV-2 scale. Based on the collected responses, the relationships between demographic factors, children’s dental problems, and parents’ fear of SARS-CoV-2 were evaluated. RESULTS: The most common reason for visiting a pediatric dentist during the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak was tooth pain. Regarding parents’ fear, 62.6% (n = 313) had moderate fear, 74.2% (n = 371) had a history of delays in referring to the dentist, and 54.4% (n = 272) had a history of moderate-to-severe dental pain. The fear scores in mothers were significantly higher than in fathers (P < 0.001). Parents of children with more pain and dental problems had higher scores on the fear scale (P = 0.017), (P = 0.016). CONCLUSION: Most pediatric dental visits during the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak were due to dental pain, and most parents had moderate-to-severe fear of their children being infected by SARS-CoV-2 through dental visits.