Comparative evaluation of Diet o gram vs Diet diary in determining the status of untreated dental caries in children:: An educational intervantion study

Dental caries is a multifactorial disease with diet being one of the contributing factors. Frequent consumption of easily fermentable carbohydrates is a prerequisite for the development of caries. Hence, dental caries is directly related to diet, as it is dependent on the presence of sugars. Thus, a detailed dietary assessment is seen as an appropriate intervention for dental teams, for patients identified to be at high risk of dental caries. Several tools, such as 24-h dietary recall (retrospective) and diet-diaries (prospective), have been recommended for dietary assessment in dental practice. However, low adherence is found to be a recognized downside of their use in dental settings. Hence a need for the development of more appropriate tool for dietary assessment that is patient-centered and compatible with modern lifestyles is necessary to know the incidence of dental caries like a mobile app in relation with the dietary patterns. Frequency of diet has huge impact on dental caries. Hence there is need to collect 24 hour diet chart for 7 days to know the child’s type of diet and  frequency. Hence there is need to know the impact of dietogram app and diary diary and to know influence on the untreated dental caries.

This study aims to analyze the performance of Diet o gram app versus diet diary for determining a child’s diet pattern and to know the correlation of diet on the status of untreated  dental caries by calculating the newly formed carious lesions.

It is an observational study with educational intervention carried out in schools of Nellore district. Informed consent was obtained from the parents of children who will be participating in study.

788 children in the age range of 6 -12 years will participate in this study. After recruitment, untreated dental caries is scored based on ICDAS II criteria at baseline. The participants will be divided into two groups by using a simple randomization technique. The group 1 utilizes the diet o gram app, while Group 2 utilizes a diet diary. Later, instructions will be given to the respective group on how to record the data in a mobile application and diet diary for one week.  Based on the baseline data, a presentation on oral health is given to all the children as well as to the parents, outlining the significance of diet and how it affects the development of dental caries individually using a pamphlet to the group using diet diary and with AV aids to the group using diet o gram app. Based on the baseline data the diet assessment will be carried out using the formula Dental health diet score = [Food score + Nutrient score – Sweet score] in the mobile app. Subsequently, all the children will receive specific instructions on how to improve and maintain good healthy diet patterns based on their scores every month for a year. After a year the status of untreated dental caries  is assessed again using ICDAS II criteria and compared  between two individual groups.