Dental attitudes, knowledge, and health practices of parents of children with congenital heart disease
a Community Dental
Service, Oxfordshire Community Health NHS Trust, b Institute of Child Health with the Great Ormond Street
Hospital for Children and the Eastman Dental Institute
Correspondence to: Professor Graham J Roberts, Maxillo-Facial and Dental Department, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Trust, Great Ormond Street, London WC1N 3JH.
Accepted 28 March 1997
A total of 60 children with severe congenital cardiac disease
from the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and Guy's Hospital
children's department were matched for age, gender, social class, and
ethnic origin with 60 healthy children from the trauma clinic of the
Department of Orthodontics and Paediatric Dentistry at Guy's Dental
Hospital, London. The parents' attitude, knowledge, and dental health
practices were assessed by questionnaire.
The cardiac group had significantly poorer dental health practices
than the healthy group. Of the cardiac children 18% had never visited
the dentist compared with only 3% for the healthy group. It is
difficult to assess the importance of this in terms of a serious health
hazard. Current practice of cardiac physicians is to recommend that
children with heart disease seek out and attend a dentist, the advice
usually being accompanied by the presentation of a `heart card'
detailing antibiotic prophylaxis regimens if extractions are required.
The data presented here shows that this strategy has failed.
© 1997 by Archives of Disease in Childhood
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
-
Moons, P, De Volder, E, Budts, W, De Geest, S, Elen, J, Waeytens, K, Gewillig, M
(2001). What do adult patients with congenital heart disease know about their disease, treatment, and prevention of complications? A call for structured patient education. Heart
86: 74-80
[Abstract] [Full Text]
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in ADC Online
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
-
Child health
-
Drugs: cardiovascular system
-
Dentistry and oral medicine
-
Congenital heart disease
- Drugs: infectious diseases
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
