Dental Problems of Children with Special Health Care Need in Two City, Eastern Province , KSA

Background: Access to dental care and delivery of quality dental health services are important for children with special needs.

As a dental health professionals , it is our responsibility to improve the general health and awareness among general population .Young students with special needs a group that needs a focused intention to communicate with effectively and for that becomes able to evaluate their oral health condition , what is their common oral disease and what are their most oral needs , and educating them about oral health in a way they can interact with.

Methods: We sent a questionnaire to 90 parent`s students with special needs- Autism, down syndrome and mental retardation in two governmental schools one in Dammam and one Qatif and then we visit the schools to do education (Placeholder1)al program include presentation and video about oral health after that screening to involved student to correlate the patient oral health with our survey results and analyze the data collected.

Results: Only 65 children were examined from 90 students.

Of those, 34 (52.3%) were autistic, 24(36.9%) were mentally retarded, while 7(10.8%) suffered from dawn syndrome.

The mean DMFT was 5, and (63.1%) of the examined children had a healthy gingiva .

Regarding the caregivers’ awareness of their children’s oral health, 28 (43.1%) was not aware of their children’s oral health needs at all.

Conclusion: We found that the student with special need having fair oral hygiene.

Regarding to the awareness of health givers, we expected that they have awareness more than what we f