Toothbrushing behavior in children - an observational study of toothbrushing performance in 12 year olds

Many countries offer systematic group prevention programs in kindergarten and school in order to promote children's oral health. Little is known, however, about the actual toothbrushing abilities of children when group prevention programs end. In Germany, all children take advantage from a nati...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	BMC oral health Vol. 19; no. 1; p. 68
Main Authors:	Deinzer, Renate, Cordes, Oliver, Weber, Julia, Hassebrauck, Lisa, Weik, Ulrike, Krämer, Norbert, Pieper, Klaus, Margraf-Stiksrud, Jutta
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	England BioMed Central Ltd 29-04-2019 BioMed Central BMC
Subjects:	Age Analysis Behavior Behavioral science Child Child behavior Child health Children Children & youth Cities and towns Community dentistry Dental education Dental hygiene Dentistry Early childhood education Education Germany Health Health aspects Health Behavior Health promotion Humans Hygiene Hypotheses Kindergarten Observational studies Oral health Oral hygiene Parents & parenting Performance evaluation Planning Preschool education Preventive dentistry Skills Teaching Teaching methods Teeth Toiletries industry Toothbrushes Toothbrushing Toothbrushing - statistics & numerical data Wellness programs Germany Preventive dentistry Dental hygiene Oral hygiene Behavioral science Toothbrushing Dental education Community dentistry
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Summary:	Many countries offer systematic group prevention programs in kindergarten and school in order to promote children's oral health. Little is known, however, about the actual toothbrushing abilities of children when group prevention programs end. In Germany, all children take advantage from a nationwide group prevention program (called "Gruppenprophylaxe") lasting from kindergarten up to sixth grade (12 years of age). Standardized recommendations are given concerning brushing systematics and brushing movements. N = 174 children at the age of 12 were thus randomly selected from two German towns and were asked to perform toothbrushing to the best of their abilities in front of a mirror which also served as a camera. Brushing behavior was analyzed by video analysis. Children brushed their teeth for an average of 200 s ± 80.48 s (mean ± SD). Still, more than 55% missed at least one sextant when brushing inner surfaces, 16% missed them all. Only 7.5% of the children brushed both inner and outer surfaces by the intended movements (vertical movements on the inner surfaces and circular movements on the outer surfaces) for at least 90% of the respective brushing time. Instead, horizontal brushing was very common on the lateral surfaces. The present analysis indicates that children have low efficiency to adopt the tooth-brushing recommendations given in prevention programs. This is surprising as great endeavors are made to help children internalize the recommendations. Future research is needed to better understand which factors impede adoption of toothbrushing recommendations in children and which efforts are necessary to improve their toothbrushing abilities.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-2 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Undefined-1 ObjectType-Feature-3 content type line 23
ISSN:	1472-6831 1472-6831
DOI:	10.1186/s12903-019-0755-z