Journal of

Introduction: Asthma is a chronic inflammatory airway disorder, which has a high prevalence within preschool children. Since conflicting results have been reported in previous studies regarding DMFT in asthmatic children, the current study aimed to compare DMFT in asthmatic and non-asthmatic children.

Methods: The present study was carried out on 46 (6-12 years old) asthmatic children and 47 matched healthy controls. In asthmatic children, severity of disease, type and dose of inhaler, duration and frequency of medication, inhaler use technique and mouth cleaning were examined after using the spray. In addition, DMF, plaque index and gingival inflammation were evaluated in both groups.The collected data were analyzed via SPSS Software (ver. 22) applying Mann-Whitney, Chi-Square and Logistic regression.

Results: No significant difference was observed in regard with DMFT score in the two case and control groups (p.value=0.804). Although the study results showed that severity of asthma (p.value=0.007) and inhaler use technique (p.value=0.002)can have significant effects on dental caries, no significant relationship was detected between type and dose of spray, duration and frequency of usage as well as DMFT.

Conclusion: As the study results indicated, DMFT index revealed no significant difference in asthmatic children in comarison with the healthy children. Therefore, improving the existing dental services and performing oral education, prevention and treatment programs in regard with oral health of children seem to be neccessitated in the future.