Dental fear and caries prevalence in schoolchildren with hearing impairment in Greece

PurposeThere have been limited reports on hearing impaired (HI) children's oral health, but no data on their dental fear. The aim of this study was to assess dental fear and caries prevalence in HI children and adolescents.MethodsUpon ethical approval, all elementary and junior/senior high schools for the HI in Greece were invited to participate in the study. Students were asked to fill in the Children's Fear Survey Schedule-Dental Subscale (CFSS-DS). High school students additionally answered the Modified Dental Anxiety Scale (MDAS). Both questionnaires were translated into sign language by the same licensed interpreter. Caries prevalence was evaluated by dmfs/DMFS indices. Statistics by SPSS Statistics 28 (IBM) included parametric and non-parametric tests (significance at p <= 0.05).Results33 elementary and 53 junior/senior high school students (mean age = 10.89 +/- 2.63 and 16.23 +/- 1.33 years, respectively) participated in the study. Means of CFSS-DS were 24.1 +/- 9.9 and 26.9 +/- 10.5, respectively. Mean MDAS (high school students) was 11.3 +/- 4.7. Mean dmfs was 2.5 +/- 5.2 for elementary and mean DMFS was 3.5 +/- 5.4 for elementary and 7.3 +/- 9.0 for high school students, higher than similar-age general population. Dental fear was not significantly associated to age, gender, severity of hearing impairment (HI) or caries prevalence.ConclusionHI children present similar dental fear values, but higher caries prevalence compared to similar-age Greek hearing population.