Impact of traumatic injuries to the permanent teeth on the oral health-related quality of life in 12-14-year-old children.

BACKGROUND/AIM: There are no data on the impacts on daily living of traumatic injuries to the permanent teeth. The aim of the present study was to assess the socio-dental impacts of untreated fractured anterior teeth in Brazilian schoolchildren.

METHODS

A population-based matched case-control study was used and a 2 : 1 control-to-case ratio was adopted. The cases were 68 children 12-14 years old, having non-restored teeth, with fracture involving dentine. The controls were 136 children without any traumatic dental injury. They were matched by age, sex and socio-economic status. The Oral Impact on Daily Performances (OIDP) index was used to measure the impacts.

RESULTS

The response rate was 100%. Results of conditional logistic regression showed that children with fractured teeth were 20 times (95% CI = 2.2-45.6) more likely to report any impact on their daily living than children with no traumatic dental injury. These results remained statistically significant for the items of the OIDP separately, 'smiling' (P < 0.001), 'maintaining emotional state' (P < 0.001), 'eating' (P < 0.01), 'enjoying contact with people' (P < 0.01) and the overall OIDP (P < 0.001), after adjusting for confounding variables such as the Aesthetic Component of the Index of Orthodontic Treatment Need and DMFT index in a multiple conditional logistic regression.

CONCLUSIONS

Children with untreated dental fracture of permanent teeth had more impacts on their daily living than children without any traumatic injury.