Parent's Knowledge, Attitude and Practices Towards Oral Health of Their Children With Primary Dentition: A Cross-sectional Study

Dental caries is a chronic slowly progressing localized destruction of dental hard tissues by the acidic products formed as result of carbohydrates fermentation by bacteria due to disturbance in equilibrium between tooth minerals and plaque products through time. (Trindade et al., 2014) It's a worldwide disease affecting all ages both sexes with different socioeconomic levels. Dental caries commonly affects children and adversely affects their quality of life and so their weight and growth if left untreated (Gokhale and Nuvvula, 2015). The environmental factor is a very valuable factor affecting dental caries especially the mother and the family as whole, the family habits are directly influencing their children (Suma G and Anisha P, 2017). As parents are the primary decision makers for children and their first role models, their oral health knowledge, attitude and practice as well as habits influence their children (Dikshit et al., 2018).

There is lack of data about parent's oral health knowledge, attitude and practice and their implications on their children in Egypt.

Acquiring information about oral health knowledge of parents, will help identifying those children who are at risk of dental caries consequently it will be possible to offer the proper preventive and curative measures for them.

So, we need to know the effect of oral health knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of parents on caries prevalence of their children.