Oral health status of Egyptian mothers and their preschool children: association of mother’s oral health literacy and marital satisfaction‑ a cross‑sectional study

Abstract

Background Oral health literacy (OHL) and marital satisfaction (MS) are known to afect the overall health and qual‑ ity of life of parents and their children. A possible relation between MS and oral health has never been studied before. We aimed to; frst; assess levels of OHL and MS of Egyptian mothers, and second; investigate a possible relation between these levels and the oral health status of the mothers and their preschool children. Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted on 130 preschool-aged children and their mothers utilizing a structured, questionnaire consisting of three sections; 1- demographic and oral health-related data; 2- seven ques‑ tions of ENRICH Marital Satisfaction (EMS) Scale of mothers, and 3-A modifed Arabic Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Dentistry (A-REALD-30) to measure the mother’s ability to read 30 commonly used dental terms. Clinical examina‑ tion of the participants was conducted afterwards to evaluate the oral health status using the Decay, missed flled teeth (DMFT), dmft, plaque, and gingival indices (PI and GI). Results The mean (SD) of DMF, PI, and GI for mothers were 5.07(3.41), 1.29(0.45), and 1.13(0.52) respectively. Children’s mean (SD) dmft was 5.42(3.27), the mean (SD) of total EMS and A-REALD-30 scores were 23.41(6.79) and 21.65(6.02) respectively. There was a positive correlation between the EMS score and A-REALD-30, p-value=0.44, and r=0.068, a negative correlation between EMS score and DMFT, dmft, PI, and GI, p-value=0.0043, 0.032, 0.956, and 0.730, and r=0.253, 0.188, 0.005, and 0.031, respectively. Whereas A-REALD-30 showed a positive correlation with the DMFT and dmft, and a negative correlation with PI and GI p-value=0.549, 0.412, 0.158, and 0.670, and r=0.053, 0.073, 0.125, and 0.038, respectively. Conclusions Within our limitations, this work showed for the frst time that there is a possible association between MS and oral health status of mothers and their preschool children. Further, this work unexpectedly showed a positive relation between A REALD-30 and DMFTs implying that REALD-30 alone would not be enough and is sug‑ gested to be used with other tools to assess OHL levels. Further long-term studies are needed to clarify how literacy and marital status afect oral health.