earticle

영어

This study was performed to evaluate the importance of parents, knowledge, cognition and behaviour aboutdental health care on the development of dental caries in preschoolers.Subjects were comprised of 170 preschoolers collected from three preschoolers placed in Pusan and Kimhaearea and study period were 6 months from January, 2000.Examination on the preschoolers' dental health and questionnarie survey on parents' knowledge, cognition andbehaviour about dental health care were conducted. Collected data were analyzed by chi-square test and t-testusing SAS program.Dental caries was so prevalent as the rate of 73.5%. And, the rate was different by the area(p=0.001), andincreased with preschooler's age(=0.004). The parents gain the knowledge about dental health care mainly fromdentist or dental hygienist(32.9%), newspaper, magazine booklets(26.5%), TV and VTR tape(20.0%), etc, butrarely from school health education(4.7%). Caries prevalence was significantly lower in case of regular brushingthan that of insufficient brushing(p=0.002) and in case of consistently informing brushing time to theirchildren(p=0.014).This results showed that the dental health care for preschoolers is insufficient and the most important factor forcaries prevention is regular brushing. And it seemed that the parent's concern and knowledge play an importantrole for the prevention of preschooler's dental caries. Dental health education would be focused on the parents,especially for the practice of preventive behavior by preschoolers themselves.