Toothache in US Children

Abstract

To describe the prevalence of and risk factors for recent toothache among US children and to estimate frequency of contact between children with toothache and their pediatric primary care providers (PPCP). Design: Cross-sectional analysis of nationally representative data.

Contextual and individual determinants of dental pain in preschool children

“…At the individual level, most of the factors included in the present study were associated with dental pain. The findings corroborate results from the U.S. 2007 National Survey of Children's Health and other studies, on the effect of family income on dental pain . Although the relationship between sex and dental pain is inconclusive, in previous studies carried out in Brazil, girls had a higher prevalence than boys .…”

Factors Associated with No Dental Treatment in Preschoolers with Toothache: A Cross-Sectional Study in Outpatient Public Emergency Services

“…This result agrees with a study in England, where just 60% of diagnosed children with dental pain received appropriate treatment [16]. This might indicate some sort of flaw in handling toothache emergencies, which is troubling given that studies report that emergency visits are still one of the main reasons for parents to take their children to the dentist [4,5,6,7,8]. It raises concerns because children from the present study may have suffered with toothache for a long time—another study reported that a child may have suffered with symptoms for more than two weeks when s/he is brought to a health service for relief of acute dental pain [10].…”

Toothache experiences

“…The prevalence of toothache in 6-9 years children in this study is similar to a study in the United States (14%) 26 and slightly lower than toothache experience of children age seven years in Sweden with about 15% 27 . This prevalence is lower than 49.9% reported from 6-12 years old school children in Mexico 14 .…”