Dental utilization for Medicaid-enrolled children with cystic fibrosis
Elise W Sarvas1, Colleen E Huebner2, JoAnna M Scott3
1Clinical Assistant Professor, Division of Pediatric Dentistry, University of Minnesota, Minnesota. elisesarvas@gmail.com.
Insights
Children with cystic fibrosis (CF) utilize dental care less often than their peers. This finding suggests that reduced dental care use does not explain lower cavity rates in children with CF.
Area of Science:
- Pediatric Health
- Dental Public Health
- Genetics and Disease
Background:
- Children with cystic fibrosis (CF) paradoxically exhibit lower reported dental caries prevalence despite numerous risk factors.
- Preventive dental care utilization is hypothesized as a factor, but has not been previously studied in pediatric CF populations.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate dental care utilization patterns in children diagnosed with cystic fibrosis (CF).
- To determine if differences in dental care access explain the observed lower caries rates in children with CF.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of Iowa Medicaid data for children aged 3–17 years (N=156,268).
- Poisson regression models were employed to compare dental care utilization rates between children with and without CF.
Main Results:
- Children with CF demonstrated significantly lower utilization of any dental care compared to children without CF (IRR: 0.819, p < .001).
- No statistically significant variations in the use of specific dental care categories were found between the groups.
Conclusions:
- Medicaid-enrolled children with CF exhibit reduced dental care utilization.
- This lower utilization rate makes it an improbable explanation for the purportedly lower caries prevalence observed in this population.
Objectives:
Despite a multitude of risk factors, children with cystic fibrosis (CF) have lower reported dental caries prevalence. A potential explanation is preventive dental care use, but no studies to date have examined dental use for children with CF.
Methodology:
Iowa Medicaid data were analyzed for children age 3 to 17 years (N = 156,268). Poisson regression models were used to compare utilization rates for any dental care and also for specific categories of dental care, by CF status.
Results:
Children with CF were significantly less likely to use any dental care than children without CF (incident rate ratio: 0.819, 95% CI: 0.80 to 0.84, p < .001). There were no significant differences in use across specific categories of dental care.
Conclusions:
Medicaid-enrolled children with CF are less likely to use dental care than children without CF. These findings suggest that use of dental care use is an unlikely explanation for lower purported caries rates among children with CF.
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