Correlation between Prevalence and Severity of ECC and Child Eating Behaviour, Feeding Practices and Risk Factors of Caregivers

Background: Good oral health is an integral component of good general health. Although good oral health includes much more than having healthy teeth, many children have inadequate oral and general health because of uncontrolled and active dental caries.

Dental caries is multi factorial communicable and infectious disease that requires a triad of Host, Substrate and bacteria. In addition many anatomic, behavioural, dietary, genetic, social, socioeconomic and therapeutic variables significantly influence the caries activity.

It is believed that excessive bottle feeding and/or breast feeding after the eruption of primary teeth is associated with ECC and rampant caries.

This study is carried out to find any correlation between severity of ECC and child eating behaviour and parental characteristics; and also evaluate its effects on growth in children between the age group of 3 to 6 years of age.

Methods: Healthy children between age 3 to 6 years with and without ECC are selected for the study. All the children and their caregivers are clinically examined to assess caries experience and oral hygiene status. The caregivers of the children are interviewed based on a structured questionnaire. Maternal S mutans levels are checked with Oratest to correlate the possibility of risk factors.The children from both the groups are anthropometrically checked for height and weight.

Results: After analysing the data with appropriate statistical tools it is evident that there can be a positive correlation between the eating behaviour, feeding practices of the children and occurrence of ECC . The parental risk factors play an important role in the prevalence of ECC in children.

Conclusion: Parent education about maintain oral hygiene at very young age and appropriate feeding practices can reduce occurrence of ECC. Good oral hygiene of the caregivers plays a pivotal role in reducing risk of ECC.