Caregiver Illness Perception of Their Child's Early Childhood Caries

The purpose of this case-control study was to evaluate the association between parent/caregivers' illness perception and early childhood caries (ECC).

Parent/caregivers of children younger than six years old were recruited at the dental clinic of an urban children's hospital between June 2013 and September 2015. Cases were caregivers of ECC children; controls were caregivers of children without ECC. Caregivers completed the Illness Perception Questionnaire-Revised for Dental (IPQ-RD) assessing cognitive (identity, consequences, control, timeline, illness coherence, cause) and emotional representations of dental caries. Twelve IPQ-RD construct-specific summary scores were calculated; higher scores represented a less accurate perception. Logistic regression models examined the relationship between IPQ-RD constructs and ECC.

The sample included a total of 165 parent/caregivers: 54 had children (33 percent) without ECC; 111 had ECC children (67 percent). Two of the 12 constructs were related to ECC status. Controlling for caregiver age, education, race/ethnicity, and child age, caregivers of ECC children had a less accurate perception of the consequences of dental caries (odds ratio [OR] equals 2.24; 95 percent confidence interval [CI] equals 1.07 to 4.69) and a more accurate perception of the controllability of caries (OR equals 0.29; 95 percent CI equals 0.11 to 0.76) compared to caregivers of children without ECC.

Clinicians should emphasize the consequences and controllability of ECC to help caregivers self-manage their children's oral health.