The effect of parents' oral health literacy and awareness about space maintainers on the oral HEALTH of their children

Aim: The aim of this study is to determine the parents' oral health literacy and awareness about spacemaintainers, and to investigate the associated factors, and to evaluate the effects of parents' oral health literacy and awareness space maintainers on their children's oral health. Material and Method: 600 patients aged between 6-12 years and their parents who applied to the Department of Pediatric Dentistry of Recep Tayyip Erdogan University Faculty of Dentistry between August 2022 and October 2022 were included in the study. In the first stage of this cross-sectional study, a questionnaire consisting of 29 questions was applied face-to-face to the parents, investigating sociodemographic data, parents' oral health knowledge, children's experience of deciduous tooth loss and space maintainer experience, and parents' awareness of spacemaintainers. In the second stage, parents' oral health literacy was measured using the TREALD-30 and TREALD-30A scales. In the last stage, the oral health status of the children was recorded with DMFT and PUFA indices. The obtained data were evaluated with the IBM SPSS V26 program, with p<0,05 as the significance level. Results: It was observed that 40,5% of the parents had awareness about spacemaintainers. The mean scores of the participants on the TREALD-30 and TREALD-30A scales were recorded as 24,194,66 and 13,162,88. The mean DMFT and PUFA scores were 6,843,62 and 1,853,65, respectively. A statistically significant association was found between parents' oral health literacy and their awareness of spacemaintainers (p<0,001). It was concluded that as the oral health literacy of the parents increased, their awareness of spacemaintainers increased. A statistically significant relationship was found between parents' spacemaintainers awareness and their children's DMFT values (p=0,036). It was observed that as parents' awareness of spacemaintainers increased, their children's DMFT values also increased. There was no statistically significant relationship between parents' awareness of spacemaintainers and their children's average PUFA values (p=0,114). There was no statistically significant relationship between the oral health literacy of the parents and the mean DMFT and PUFA values of their children (p=0,297; p=0,122). Keywords: oral health literacy, spacemaintainer, oral and dental health