Anticipatory guidance and children's oral health: A scoping review

Anticipatory guidance (AG) involves providing parents with information about developmental milestones and promoting optimal development. Oral AG was first introduced as a comprehensive approach to provide age-appropriate oral health information and preventive interventions. The literature regarding this important topic has not yet been reviewed and summarised.

To describe the literature on AG provided to parents about their children's oral health and identify gaps in the current research.

The scoping review mapped the existing peer-reviewed and guideline documents about AG and children's oral health using the framework established by Arksey and O'Malley (2005) and modified by Levac et al. (2010). Firstly, we defined our research questions and searched the literature using Medline, Web of Science and Scopus. Secondly, we selected all types of literature and then applied the inclusion and exclusion criteria, and finally, we analysed and summarised the information using thematic analysis.

Forty-three peer-reviewed articles and six guidelines were included. There was variation in how AG was described and defined. While some studies have evaluated the effectiveness of AG, most have investigated its short-term effectiveness only, with few interventional studies assessing this approach in the long-term.

While the concept of AG shows promise, there is no consensus within the current literature on a defined definition and there is a lack of long-term evaluation.