Dental examination project is useful to detect dental caries and malocclusion of children early.
Its effects are not fully achieved due to lack of active post-examination management. This study evaluated interest of parents of elementary school children on the examination. Its consistency with results sheets and their compliance to recommendation and determined related factors to improve effects of School dental health management project.
This study recruited 1,338 parents of first and forth-grade students at two elementary schools located in Busan metropolitan city & Gyeongnam city performing Dental Examination Project in 2009 and investigated results of the examination, the parents’ visited dental clinics of results, whether the students visited dental clinics following results of the examination The parents of first -grade students showed good memory of dental caries and malocclusion and higher consistency for malocclusion. The parents of forth-grade students had higher consistency for dental caries. In addition, when parents had fewer knowledge on dental health, their memory and its consistency with real results were found to be better. Visiting rates of dental clinics according to grade were 74.3% due to dental caries in first-grade students and 51.3% due to malocclusion in forth-grade students. Visiting rate in children with dental caries were 73.3% in family income of over 3 million won and 54.8% in children with malocclusion in family income of less than 3 million won. Lower level of knowledge on dental health of parents was observed to be associated with higher visiting rate. Among students with abndrenl results of the examination, 71.7% of the children with dental caries of parents having same memory with real results visited the hospitals while 65.9% of those of parents having different memory with them did. For malocclusion, 53.3% and 38.5% of the students of parents with same memory and with different memory respectively saw dentists. When parents had few knowledge on dental health, they were considered to follow results of the examination well because they thought them more seriously and gave more attention to them.
Moreover, when satisfaction on the project was examined according to income levels, some parents did not show high satisfaction. Therefore, to meet expectation of the parents with low satisfaction as well as parents with low income level and relatively high compliance, School Dental Health Project should be specialized and diversified to become an essential medical service of school health.
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