Effect of dental health education of parents on the success of the comprehensive dental treatment of their children under general anesthesia

ABSTRACT

This work was conducted to study the effect of parental dental health education on the success of restorations performed for children suffering from early childhood caries under general an-esthesia. Sixty four young dental patients, free from any systemic disease or condition, between 3 and 6 years of age to whom complete oral rehabilitation under general anesthesia were indicated, were included in this study. The children were treated by highly qualified staff members of the ped-odontic department, Cairo University. All treatment modalities were performed, except prosthetics, and recorded in their treatment sheets. Thirty three the children's parents were given dental health education sessions while their children being treated, or during the follow-up periods later on, and diet history record sheets were also provided [experimental group]. Another group of 31 control parents were included who were given the printed post treatment instruction sheets of the department. Follow-up for all cases were done 2 weeks, 3 months, 6months and 1 year. The results of the present study showed that out of 624 carious primary teeth, only 67 of them were extracted [10.74%] and 557 [89.26%] were restored either by amalgam [49.04%], composite [38.94%] or by stainless steel crowns [1.28%]. It was also found that out of the 557 restored teeth, pulpotomy was performed in 1 304 [54.58%], pulpectomy was done in 92 teeth [16.52], whereas 161 [28.90%] were restored without pulp treatment. The children of both groups manifested nearly similar proportions of such treatments. Deteriorations in the restorations performed and the development of new carious cavities were clearly observed after 1 years. In general, children of the control group manifested double to triple the failure noticed in the experimental group both in amalgam or comnposite restorations or even in the appearance of new carious lesions. No failures had occurred in the teeth restored by stainless steel crown. In general, deteriorations in composite restorations were considerably higher than that of amalgam in the same group