Maternal perception about child oral health is associated to child dental caries and to maternal self-report about oral health

Objective: To test the association between maternal perception about child's oral health and child dental caries experience and maternal self-perception about oral health. Materials and methods: A cross-sectional study was performed with mothers and their children aged six to 13 years. A questionnaire was applied to mothers. Children were dentally examined using the DMF-T/dmf-t Index. For analysis, Poisson regression models with robust variance were employed for each variable of interest (child dental caries experience and maternal self-report about oral health). Magnitudes of associations were estimated through Prevalence Ratio (PR) as effect measure with 95% confidence intervals (CI). A significant level of p ≤ .05 was adopted. Results: Overall, 131 mothers-children dyads were included. Most of children were girls (52.7%) and aged between 10 to 13 years (60.3%). Negative maternal perception about child's oral health was associated to maternal negative self-perception about oral health (PR 2.54; 95%CI 1.54-4.30) and to higher child dental caries experience (PR 2.21; 95%CI 1.41-3.47). Conclusion: Maternal perception about child oral health was associated to child dental caries and to maternal self-report about oral health.