Who accompanies paediatric dental patients and the types of dental treatment provided at queen alia military hospital?

Abstract EN

Objectives : To evaluate who accompanied children to their appointments at the paediatric dental clinic, number of accompanying persons and the types of dental treatments provided at Queen Alia Military Hospital in Amman Jordan.

Methods : A prospective study was designed.

Data were collected from children who visited the paediatric dental clinic for dental treatment over a six month period (1st-August-2008 to 31 January-2009), at Queen Alia Military Hospital in Amman Jordan.

Data collected from the patients included: the age of patients, gender, accompanying person and number / s of accompanying adults and children and their relationship to the patient ; the appointment time (morning or afternoon) and the types of dental treatment (emergency visit, routine work, a new patient assessment and follow up dental treatment).

Results : A total of 430 paediatric dental visits were recorded.

The age of the patients ranged from 1 to 14 years old with a mean of 8.83±2.91 years.

Of the total 430 dental visits 242 (56.3%) male and 188 (43.7%( were female.

In all appointment types the father was the most frequently accompanying person : 57.7% for new patient assessments, 53.6% with follow up cases, 47.6% for routine cases and 38.2% for emergency cases.

In emergency cases, 86.6% of child patients were accompanied by the father or the mother or both of them.

While in 13.4% of cases the children were accompanied by other relative (older siblings, grandfather, grandmother and uncle) or were unaccompanied.

The majority of patients 244 (56.7%) were accompanied by one person while 10 (2.3%) patients were unaccompanied.

The maximum number of accompanying persons was 6.

There were 385 dental visits (89.5%) in the morning session and 45 (10.5%) in the afternoon session.

Conclusions : It was concluded that in all appointment types and time of dental visits the father was the most frequently accompanying person.

The majority of paediatric dental visits were for routine dental treatments, while the minority of visits was for follow up cases.