Publication Date: 2023/10/26
Abstract: Context COVID 19 is a highly contagious viral disease. Dental office has garnered a lot of attention as one of the potential sources of SARS-CoV-2 transmission and dissemination. Due to this, the frequency of dental visits among children and their parents have reduced substantially.Aims To assess maternal practices towards dental treatment of primary school children after the emergence of COVID 19.Settings and Design A school based cross sectional electronic survey, conducted in various schools in Chalakudy town in Kerala.Methods and Material The study was conducted among mothers of primary school children, with a sample size of 709. The data were collected using a validated questionnaire comprised of four parts, part A recorded basic demography, part B mothers’ knowledge, part C attitude and part D recorded practices towards dental care and impact covid 19 on dental care.Statistical Analysis Data were analysed using the SPSS version 21. Descriptive measures and chi-square test was conducted separately for each variable. P value was set at < 0.05 level of significance.Results The findings showed that overall knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) scores of the mothers revealed 81.3% had good KAP score. Among them 95.5% had adequate knowledge while 93.1% had positive attitude whereas a mere 40.7% was translated into practice.Conclusions Knowledge of mothers towards dental treatment of primary school children after the emergence of COVID 19 was adequate but the attitude and the practices were not and this probably due to the fear. Expecting similar pandemics in future, standard operating procedure (SOP) which would ensure absolute infection control in a dental clinic and spreading awareness of such SOP’samong parents can reduce their apprehensions to get dental treatments for their kids.
Keywords: COVID 19, Primary School Children, Dental Treatment.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10043976
PDF: https://ijirst.demo4.arinfotech.co/assets/upload/files/IJISRT23OCT647.pdf
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