1Post Graduate Student, Department of Public Health Dentistry, Yenepoya Dental College, Mangalore, Karnataka, India
2Professor & Head, Department of Public Health Dentistry, Yenepoya Dental College, Mangalore, Karnataka, India
3Reader, Department of Public Health Dentistry, Yenepoya Dental College, Mangalore, Karnataka, India
4Senior Lecturer, Department of Public Health Dentistry, Yenepoya Dental College, Mangalore, Karnataka, India
*Corresponding Author: Dr. Supriya A. Post Graduate Student, Department of Public Health Dentistry, Yenepoya Dental College, Mangalore, Karnataka, India
Online published on 13 November, 2019.
Oral health is an important aspect of health for all children, and is all the more important for children with special health needs because, severity of medical conditions and perceived general health are significantly associated with dental health status.
It is a non-randomised intervention study conducted among 510 children with special health care needs aged 7–18 years attending 5 special schools in Mangalore city. The oral health status among these children was assessed using the OHI-S (1964) at baseline, midway and at the end of 9th month of the intervention. The oral health education continued every month till the 9th month of the study.
In the present study it has been observed that majority of the children had fair oral hygiene i.e 69.4% in the baseline, which increased to 70.0% in the mid intervention period which further increased to 70.6% at the end of 9th month.
The children who received training to brush their teeth with the help of pictures showed slight improvement in their mean OHI-S scores (2.27 to 2.22) at the end of 9th month.
Oral health, toothbrushing, health education, special health care needs, Audio-visual
