Canadian dentists' awareness and views on early childhood caries and its prevention and management

Joshua Levesque; Suhird Ghotra; Betty-Anne Mittermuller; Daniella DeMaré; Victor H K Lee; Vivianne Cruz de Jesus; Olubukola O Olatosi; Hamideh Alai-Towfigh; Robert J Schroth

doi:10.3389/froh.2023.1268350

Canadian dentists' awareness and views on early childhood caries and its prevention and management

Front Oral Health. 2024 Jan 8:4:1268350. doi: 10.3389/froh.2023.1268350. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Joshua Levesque^{1

2}, Suhird Ghotra^{1

2}, Betty-Anne Mittermuller^{1

2}, Daniella DeMaré^{1

2}, Victor H K Lee^{1

2}, Vivianne Cruz de Jesus^{2

3}, Olubukola O Olatosi^{1

2

3}, Hamideh Alai-Towfigh¹, Robert J Schroth^{1

2

4

5}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Preventive Dental Science, Dr. Gerald Niznick College of Dentistry, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada.
² Children's Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada.
³ Department of Oral Biology, Dr. Gerald Niznick College of Dentistry, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada.
⁴ Department of Pediatrics and Child Health, Max Rady College of Medicine, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB, Canada.
⁵ Shared Health Inc., Winnipeg, MB, Canada.

Abstract

Introduction: The Canadian Dental Association (CDA) recommends children visit a dentist within 6 months of the eruption of their first tooth or by 12 months of age. The aim of this study was to investigate Canadian dentists' awareness and views on early childhood caries (ECC) and its prevention and management.

Methods: This study analyzed a subset of questions relating to dentists' knowledge of ECC and prevention strategies, from a national survey of general and pediatric dentists, commissioned by the CDA in 2013. Analyses included descriptive, bivariate, and multivariate analyses. A p-value of ≤0.05 was considered significant.

Results: Three thousand two hundred thirty-two out of 14,747 dentists responded (response rate of 21.9%), with 95.1% having heard of ECC. Overall, 60.9% of respondents reported that they were comfortable providing treatment to children with ECC. Significant differences were found between the number of years in practice and whether dentists were or were not comfortable providing prevention (19.5 ± 12.6 years vs. 25.4 ± 12.1 years; p < 0.001) or treatment for patients with ECC (19.1 ± 12.7 years vs. 22.5 ± 12.3 years; p < 0.001). Pediatric dentists (OR = 6.92; 95% CI: 2.57, 18.61), female dentists (OR = 1.13; 95% CI: 1.03, 1.24), dentists practicing in smaller urban areas (OR = 1.17; 95% CI: 1.07, 1.28), and dentists who were aware of the CDA's position on ECC (OR = 1.26; 95% CI: 1.13, 1.41) were more likely to be comfortable providing treatment for children with ECC.

Conclusions: While the majority of Canadian dentists have sufficient knowledge of ECC, not all are comfortable providing oral health care services to children at a young age. It is encouraging however, that most dentists are wanting additional oral health resources designed for education on ECC prevention for parents of young children.

Keywords: access to care; child; early childhood caries; early childhood oral health care; pediatric dentistry; preschool; survey.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.