RESUMO
Oral health education is an important subject in life-long prevention of dental problems. The aim of this study was to assess the effects of repetition of oral hygiene instruction in a group of 9 to 10 years old students in the Ahvaz. The students were 364 boys and girls of grades 3 and 4 in the primary school. Before the begging of the teaching program, all the students were examined. Their oral hygiene was verified using the simplified index of the oral health offered by Green-Vermillion [CI-S, DI-S, OHI-S] and gingival health was recorded with the diagnostic standard of [James, Jackson, Stack and Lawton] in exacting of the teaching program. The students were divided into 4 groups the number of teaching sessions and the period between them were different in these groups: group once every two weeks and totally 6 times, group two: monthly and totally 3 times, group three a single session and group four [control] were not trained at all. An educational film with supplementary oral explanations and simplified educating were used as means of training. After completion the education sessions, sanitary daily practices and the oral conditions of student were re-examined. The results were evaluated with chi-square, ANOVA and t- tests and accepted result is being statistically significant at P<0.05. Thirteen students dropped from the study, finally the 351 remaining students were examined and the results were as follows. The medium OHI-S and DI-S in the group one at the final examination showed a meaningful decrease compared with the first examination, but for the CI-S medium were not a meaningful difference compared with the first examinations. As for gingival health condition, in the all groups with training, students had improved their gingival from poor oral hygiene to medium or good health. These results showed that importance of oral hygiene instruction and follow up via repetition of it is very obvious. Repetitive oral hygiene instruction via school based programs, are very useful for improvement of students motivation