Child-Oral impacts on daily performances: A socio dental approach to assess prevalence and severity of oral impacts on daily performances in South Indian school children of Bangalore city: A cross-sectional survey

Background: Oral disorders can have a negative impact on the functional, social and psychological well-being of children and their families. Oral health and dental treatment may have an impact on eating, speaking and appearance, thereby affecting quality of life. Thus, there has been a greater focus on the measurement of quality of life as a complement to the clinical measures. Objective: The aim was to assess the prevalence, characteristics and severity of oral impacts in south Indian school children using Child-Oral Impacts on Daily Performances (Child-OIDP) index as a measure of oral health related quality of life. Methodology: A cross-sectional study was undertaken among the six government, and six private school children aged 11-12 years, of Karnataka, South India randomly selected as cluster, and all their 563 children were invited to participate. A cross culturally adapted and validated oral health-related quality of life measure; Child-OIDP was used to assess oral impacts. Results: The common perceived oral health problems were tooth ache reported by 342 children, a sensitive tooth reported by 230 children, tooth decay - hole in the tooth reported by 226 children. Eating was the most common performance affected (68.3%). The severity of impacts was high for eating and cleaning mouth and low for the study and social contact performances. Conclusion: The study reveals that oral health impacts on quality of life of school children of Karnataka aged 11-12 years. Oral impacts were prevalent, but not severe. The impacts mainly related to difficulty eating. Toothache, a sensitive tooth, tooth decay and bleeding gums contributed largely to the incidence of oral impacts