The effectiveness of dental health surveillance in preschool child with family cooperation in Child Development center, Sukhothai.

Abstract

The Objective of this experimental study was to find out the effectiveness of dental health surveillance in preschool child with family cooperation in a child development center, The research samples were divided into three groups, control group, experimental group ! (by teachers ) and experimental group 2 ( by their parents). The surveillance consisted of child dental checkup and records every month for 2 years. Statistics used for data analysis before and after implementation were Kruskal-Wallis test and Mann - Whitney U test at 95% confidence limit. Before implementation, there was no significantly difference among three groups for the tooth decays and surface tooth decays (p>0.05). The data from the monitoring of dental checkup records showed that teachers dont have a problem but parents often have forgotten at the first period and recorded regularly at the next period when continued of monitoring. Teachers and parents expected that the dental checkup caused an increase in child tooth brushing and control of sugar consumption. After 2 years, there was no significantly difference among three groups for the increment of tooth decays (p>0.05). The incremant of surface tooth decays in control group was significantly difference from that seen in experimental group 1 and experimental groups 2 (p<0.05). This study indicated that the dental health surveillance by dental checkup and record every month could reduce the development of new surface dental caries in preschool children and the effectiveness by parent's cooperation was similar to that by teachers.