Conhecimento dos pais sobre a saúde bucal de crianças hospitalizadas.

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the level of parents knowledge about the oral health of hospitalized children and to diagnose the child´s oral health condition at the time of hospitalization. Methodology: A cross-sectional study carried out in the pediatric department of the Onofre Lopes University Hospital. Sixty pairs of hospitalized children and their parents were involved, who were submitted to a semi-structured questionnaire related to oral health. The oral health status of the children was observed through the recording of the ceo-d and CPO-d indices. The collected data were inserted in the SPSS program (version 20.0) and performed statistical tests. Results: 30% of hospitalized children were between 2 and 5 years old and 53.3% were male; the mean of ceo-d was 2 and CPO-D was 2.67; 98.3% of their parents were female; 55% had only elementary education; 68.3% received brushing orientation during hospitalization and 66.7% showed satisfactory knowledge. There was no statistically significant association (p> 0.05) between the parents´ knowledge and the other variables. Conclusion: Parents child´s had satisfactory knowledge about oral health, although they had a low level of schooling and had received no guidance on oral health care.