A Longitudinal Study of Oral Health-Related Impacts in Infants

Very little is known about the levels of oral health-related impacts experienced by young children. The recent development and validation of the Early Childhood Oral Health Impact Scale (ECOHIS), designed to measure such impacts in infants, has enabled investigation of this subject. Objectives: To i) describe oral health-related impacts in a sample of 12 month old children followed for 18 months; and ii) investigate how socio-demographic factors are related to variation in these impacts in the same sample. Methods: A sample of 412 parent/infant dyads were recruited in Quebec when the infants were six (± 1) months old and followed until they were 30 months old. Oral health-related impacts were evaluated using a validated French version of the ECOHIS – a 13-item measure completed by a parent with respect to their child's oral health-related impacts. Parents completed the ECOHIS when their children were 12, 18, 24 and 30 months old. Socio-demographic variables were collected at baseline. Analyses of variation in ECOHIS scores were performed using multivariate analysis of covariance. Over 90% of dyads remained in the follow-up evaluations. Results: Overall, levels of impacts were low. On a scale of 0-52, overall mean ECOHIS scores for the sample varied from 3.5 to 2.6 to 1.2 to 3.2 when the dyads were evaluated at 12, 18, 24 and 30 months respectively. The most common impacts reported by parents were their children experiencing pain, problems sleeping and being frustrated or being upset. Among the socio-demographic variables tested, gender and family income were significantly associated with variation in ECOHIS scores, with girls and those in the lowest income bracket reporting statistically significantly higher levels of impacts. Conclusions: Oral health-related impacts in a sample of infants from Quebec were low and were related to the gender of the child and family income. Research supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.