Home Visits and Telephone Contacts for Preventing Early Childhood Caries could be Cost Effective

Exploring Jordanian children and parents' awareness, behavior, and perception of pediatric oral health

BACKGROUND

To evaluate children's and parents' practice and attitude toward oral hygiene and their knowledge about oral hygiene.

METHODS

This cross-sectional questionnaire-based study was conducted on randomly selected children who were seen in the Pediatric dentistry clinic in different Royal Medical Services hospitals. A modified questionnaire was used to gather information from the child or parents to gather the child's demographic data and evaluate the children's and parents' practice and attitude toward oral hygiene, their knowledge about oral hygiene, information about the parent and family, and oral examination, the questionnaire questions' reliability and validity were assessed by test-retest and Cronbach's Alpha test.

RESULTS

Three hundred seventy four patients were included, and the average age was 5.06 ± 3.58 SD years. Children's and parents' practice toward oral hygiene was inadequate where the majority (83.3%) brush their teeth occasionally, change their toothbrushes infrequently, apply toothpaste inappropriately, and less than half (47.2%) clean their tongue after teeth brushing. A significant number (73%) of candidates were aware that oral health has a significant role in their general health and can prevent dental problems. Participants agreed that maintaining a healthy mouth is an individual responsibility. The majority of participants came from large family size (the average family members 6.1 ± 1.7 SD) who live below the poverty line.

CONCLUSION

Our study demonstrated that awareness of oral health status in children below the age of 12 was poor. Although their oral knowledge was good their attitude and behavior were inadequate. These findings urge the need for expanded, well-organized, preventive educational programs that include school's syllabus, house visits, and hospitals for parents and children alike.

Field assessment of a safe sleep instrument using smartphone technology

Introduction:

Sudden unexpected infant death is the leading cause of infant mortality with black: white infant mortality remaining at 2:1 for the last decade. Smartphone technology provides a convenient and accessible tool for injury prevention anticipatory guidance among at-risk communities.

Materials and Methods:

A convenience sample of pregnant teen mothers who own a smartphone. During a 1-month postnatal home visit, a safe sleep environment survey was administered, infant sleep practices were observed, and mothers trained to take and submit standard infants’ sleep environment photographs. Photographs were independently assessed for inter-rater reliability (IRR) across five sleep safety domains (primary outcome): sleep location, surface, position, presence of soft items, and hazards near the sleep area. Expert and novice coders IRR was measured using Cohen’s kappa coefficient (K). Sleep safety correlation between photographs and observation, and parent report and observation was determined.

Results:

Sixteen (57.1%) mothers completed the home visit. Most parents reported infants sleeping supine (78.5) in parents’ bedroom (85.9%). Photographs demonstrated sleep position, soft items without the baby present, and hanging toys had perfect agreement across all three coder pairs. Safe sleep experts’ IRR demonstrated perfect agreement for sleep location, position, and soft items. While 83.8% of parents were observed putting their infants down to sleep on their back, 78.5% of parents reported doing the same and 82.4% of the photographs demonstrated supine infant sleep position.

Conclusion:

Using photographs, coders can reliably categorize some key infant sleep safety aspects, and photograph sleep safety is comparable to parent report and direct observation.

Effectiveness of Postpartum Homecare Program as a New Method on Mothers' Knowledge about the Health of the Mother and the Infant

Background:

Reduced maternal mortality due to pregnancy and delivery is one of the priorities of reproductive health programs of World Health Organization. Benefiting from appropriate social support, such as receiving homecare, has an important role in mothers’ adaptation and health. Lack of access to comprehensive and desirable health services is the most important barrier to improvement of maternal health. In this study, the effect of postpartum homecare on mother's knowledge about maternal and child health is evaluated.

Materials and Methods:

This study was two-group field trial which was conducted in 2015 on 62 postpartum mothers who were selected randomly in Shahid Beheshti Hospital of Isfahan. Mothers and infants of the intervention (experimental) groups were first visited at the hospital and then received two visits at home. The control group received routine postpartum care. A researcher-designed questionnaire was used for data collection. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS18 and independent, paired t-test, and Chi-square tests.

Results:

Comparing the demographic characteristics between both groups revealed no significant difference. After the intervention mothers’ knowledge about maternal (t = 4.26; p < 0.001) and child (t = 3.19; p = 0.003) health showed a significant difference between the intervention (experimental) and control groups.

Conclusions:

Performance of postpartum homecare as a new and useful method in the health system of Iran can increase mothers’ knowledge about their own health and their children, enhance their ability to adapt with the postpartum period, and improve the health level of vulnerable populations.

[Therapeutic education in pediatric dentistry: analysis of obstacles and levers to the development of programmes in France in 2016]

OBJECTIVE

Over recent years, therapeutic patient education has become part of dental medicine. Management of early childhood caries, known to be a very common chronic disease, has evolved to include an educational dimension. The objective of this study was to identify the levers and barriers to the development of formalized therapeutic education programmes and alternatives.

METHODS

A comprehensive exploratory qualitative study was conducted between November 2015 and June 2016 on a targeted sample of 15 people aware of the problem of TPE in dentistry.

RESULTS

The study showed that TPE training in dentistry is underdeveloped, despite its numerous benefits: change of the healthcare professional's approach, implementation of structured educational programmes, development of research, etc. There are many obstacles to the development of TPE programmes: insufficient resources, rigid legislation or lack of knowledge of TPE practices. The dental profession is an obstacle itself because of its lack of understanding and variable degrees of integration the medical community. There are multiple levers, but the main ones are changing attitudes of the profession and the provision of resources to develop TPE. Although alternatives to TPE programmes exist (accompanying measures, short educational strategies, connected health), they cannot replace TPE.

CONCLUSION

More educational strategies must be developed in the field of dentistry. However, the framework of TPE must be adapted to the profession to ensure good uptake.