Knowledge Of German Pediatricians About Early Childhood Caries

Objective: To evaluate the knowledge of German pediatricians about the clinical appearance and prevention of early childhood caries.

Method: A questionnaire was sent to 1000 randomly selected pediatric practices in Germany. Some of these questions allowed several answers.

Result: The response rate was 50.2%. Typically affected teeth of the nursing bottle syndrome are the upper incisors (61.3%) or the upper incisors and molars (4.4%), but 26.1% answered that a combination of upper and lower incisors is characteristic. 48.8% advice the parents not to leave the bottle unattended to their children between the main meals, 58.4% not to give the bottle during night-time. Only 9.2% recommend carbohydrated teas, milk or fruit/vegetable juices for bottle-contents between the meals resp.8.6% during night-time. Weaning from the bottle is recommended by 12.4% of pediatricians in the age of 6 - 12 months, by 78.6% from 12 - 24 months and by 8.1% from 24 - 36 months. The individual caries-risk of a child depends on oral hygiene (99.2%), nutrition (96.2%), application of fluorides (85.1%) and the congenital predisposition (76.9%), whereas other parameters are subordinate. 71.7% recommend a regularly cleaning of teeth starting with the eruption of the first tooth. 62.9% believe that children younger than 6 years of age are able to clean their teeth without assistance. 91.7% of the pediatricians have the opinion that frequent salivary contacts between parents and child increase the child´s caries-risk. The first examination by a dentist is supposed to happen in the 2^nd year (42.7%) or the 3^rd year (39.5%), whereas 13.1% mean that it is adequate thereafter.

Conclusion: The majority of responding pediatricians know the clinical appearance of the nursing bottle syndrome, but the results still indicate a lack of knowledge of its prevention.