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Inpatient dental consultations at a pediatric hospital: A single center 1‐year review
Author(s) -
Hayes Kyler B.,
Sheller Barbara,
Williams Bryan J.,
Churchill Shervin S.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
special care in dentistry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.328
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1754-4505
pISSN - 0275-1879
DOI - 10.1111/scd.12531
Subject(s) - medicine , family medicine , logistic regression , descriptive statistics , dentistry , mathematics , statistics
Aims Inpatient dental consultations done at a pediatric hospital in 2017 were analyzed to determine consult reasons, requesting departments, and patient characteristics. Findings were compared to a 2007 study from the hospital. Methods and results Data were collected from medical records. Descriptive statistics and logistic regressions were calculated. In 2017, 300 consults were performed for 211 patients (1.8% of inpatients). hematology‐oncology requested the most consults (63%). Evaluation prior to cancer treatment, cardiac surgery, or organ transplantation was the most common reason for consult requests (52%). Fifty‐eight percent patients had a dental home; older patients were more likely to have a dental home ( P < .001). Patients with a dental home were less likely to have caries ( P = .047). Many patients with a dental home had caries (33% in 2007 and 29% in 2017); more patients without a dental home had caries (46% in 2007 and 38% in 2017). Conclusions This study both supports the dental home concept and reveals that many children with a dental home have treatment needs. This indicates that medical providers should not equate having a dental home with having dental health and emphasizes the value of an in‐hospital dental service to support the management of critically ill children.