Impact of parental smoking on temporary tooth decay in children

Abstract

Aim — find out the correlation between the intensity of temporary tooth decay in 3-year-old children affected by mother, father and mother’s smoking during pregnancy and passive smoking, which should be attributed to the risk factors of temporary tooth decay in their children. Health care workers in pediatric and dental services should pay attention to the identified risk factors and use the data in health education to prevent tooth decay in children. Materials and methods. The work was a cross-sectional study, which included a study of the condition of organs and tissues of the mouth in 309 children aged 3 years randomly selected and a personal face-to-face survey of their parents. Results. As a result of statistical processing of the study materials, it was found that the average arithmetic value of the number of affected temporary tooth surfaces per 3-year-old child in families where the father smokes is almost twice as high as in families with non-smoking fathers. The average caries intensity of temporary tooth decay in their children is 2.2 times higher than in children of non-smoking mothers. A similar indicator of temporary tooth decay in children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy reaches 14, which is 4 times higher than in children without this risk factor. During passive smoking, the average intensity of dental caries affection reaches 7.31. If there is no passive smoking, the same indicator does not exceed 4.0. Based on the data from a single factor variance analysis, we can argue that the extent to which a mother’s smoking factor affects the caries intensity of her child’s temporary teeth is significant (p<0.001). But the maternal smoking factor during pregnancy has an even more harmful effect of 8.0±2.60 and 14.0±4.92, respectively. Conclusion. The intensity of caries on the surfaces of temporary teeth in 3-year-old children is influenced by the mother, father and mother’s smoking during pregnancy and passive smoking.