View Article |
Oral health needs and barriers to care in children with learning difficulties
Maryani Mohamed Rohani1, Lily Azura Shoaib2, Jacob John3, Ros Anita Omar4, Nurul Izyan Zainuddin5, Sylvia Lim Sze Fen6, Tee Yee Ting7.
Introduction: Children with learning difficulties (LD) have poorer oral health compared to those without LD due to barriers in maintaining oral care. However, the scarcity of data for this population in Malaysia has left a huge gap in understanding their problems and how to overcome those barriers. Therefore, this study was conducted to evaluate the unmet dental needs and barriers to care perceived by the guardians of children with learning difficulties (CWLD) attending the Special Education Integrated Programmes of a mainstream primary school, in comparison to children without learning difficulties. Methods: This cross-sectional study surveyed the guardians of CWLD (case) and those without LD (control), aged 6-12 years old. A total of 225 questionnaires were distributed to the guardians with a response rate of 40.4% (N=91). Unmet dental needs and barriers in both groups were analysed using the chi-square test. Barriers with significant Chi-square results were further tested with logistic regression to investigate possible confounders. Results: Unmet dental needs of 23.1% of CWLD were found. Most of the guardians agreed that regular dental check-ups were the most needed dental treatment (27.1%) compared to other treatments. The child’s behaviour and the unwillingness of the dentists to treat were among the significant barriers to dental care within the CWLD group. Conclusion: Despite regular dental visits, guardians of CWLD perceived that their children had the most unmet dental needs compared to other children without LD, with significant barriers in terms of accessing professional dental services.
Affiliation:
- Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
- Permas Dental Surgery Bandar Baru Permas Jaya (Malaysia), Malaysia
- ST Tiew Dental Group, Shah Alam (Malaysia), Malaysia
|
|
Indexation |
Indexed by |
MyJurnal (2021) |
H-Index
|
3 |
Immediacy Index
|
0.000 |
Rank |
0 |
Indexed by |
Scopus 2020 |
Impact Factor
|
CiteScore (0.2) |
Rank |
Q4 (Medicine (all)) |
Additional Information |
SJR (0.144) |
|
|
|