Generating Evidence Through Meta-Analysis on Awareness among Parents Regarding Pit and Fissure Sealant as a Preventive Dental Treatment

Dental caries is a global burden for oral health. Pit and fissure sealants applied in childhood can help prevent caries; however, knowledge and awareness among parents regarding the prophylactic benefit of dental sealants are uncertain. This review was conducted with an aim to assess the awareness of parents toward pit and fissure sealants globally. A bibliographic search in the biomedical databases was conducted from inception till December 2022 with no restrictions on the language. The quality assessment of the studies was performed using the quality assessment checklist for analytical cross-sectional studies. The search found 12 eligible publications that were included in the review. Intraexaminer reliability Cohen's kappa (κ = 0.96) was assessed between two reviewers who independently screened, extracted data from included studies, and assessed risk of bias. Ten studies were found to have high risk while two had low risk of bias. The knowledge and awareness among parents regarding dental sealants ranged from 10.4 to 71%. The pooled data of 12 studies showed the overall knowledge of parents toward pit and fissure sealant to be 29%. Parents are found to be aware and supportive toward the usage of dental sealant as a caries preventive agent for their children. However, the level of awareness regarding pit and fissure sealant in this review varied from low to high which was not dependent on the parent's level of education, and overall awareness was found to be poor. Moreover, majority of the studies had high risk of bias. Future studies should strive for better methodological standards to avoid bias.