Dental Pain, Parental SARS‐Cov2 Fear and Distress on Quality of Life of 2‐6‐Year‐Old Children During COVID‐19

Samuel, Srinivasan R; Kuduruthullah, Syed; Khair, Al Moutassem B; Shayeb, Maher Al; Elkaseh, Abed; Varma, Sudhir R

BACKGROUND: Corona virus disease (COVID‐19) has crippled life, families and oral health care delivery in India due to nation wide lockdown. AIM: Through cross‐sectional design we investigated the impact of child’s dental pain, caregiver’s fear of SARS‐CoV2 and parental distress on oral health related quality of life (OHRQOL) of preschoolers during the nationwide COVID‐19 pandemic lockdown. DESIGN: Preschool children self‐reported their pain using pieces of hurt scale; caregiver SARS‐CoV2 fear was assessed using fear of COVID‐19 scale and parental distress evaluated using 4‐item scale. Child’s oral health assessed using dmft index and OHRQOL evaluated using early childhood oral health impact scale. Bivariate, multivariate regression analysis was conducted to identify predictors; statistical significance was set at 5%. RESULTS: Sample mean age was 4.58 years, and about 69% were boys. Children reporting higher pain scores (OR=1.9) due to decayed teeth and having dmft >5 (OR=4.25); followed by greater parental distress (OR=4.13) and fear of SARS‐CoV2 (OR=3.84) were significantly associated with poor OHRQOL during the COVID‐19 pandemic. CONCLUSIONS: Greater parental distress and fear of COVID‐19 among caregivers, higher self perceived dental pain among children and caries experience is associated with poor OHRQOL of preschool children during the COVID‐19 pandemic.