Publication:

Knowledge regarding dental fluorosis among middle school children’s of Nelamangla town, Bengaluru, India: a pre-experimental study

Background Dental fluorosis is a becoming epidemic in most of the countries worldwide it is continuing to rise. In India the prevalence of dental fluorosis is about 46% which is really a cause of concern. The main objective of the study was to understand the knowledge level of middle school children’s also to find out the effectiveness of the teaching program to educate the children’s regarding dental fluorosis.

Methods This were a pre-experimental study done on selected middle school children over the period of one month where 60 students have participated in the study. Demographic variables and structured knowledge questionnaires were used to collect the data. SPSS V16.0 was used for the data analysis.

Results Our result shows majority of the students had inadequate to moderate knowledge and none of them had adequate knowledge regarding dental fluorosis. However, after the post-test there was an improvement of students’ knowledge where mean score was 13.54, with a mean percentage of 45.13. The SD was 3.21, and the “t”-test value was 23.07 at the level of p<0.001.

Conclusions The findings of the study indicate that there is a lot more to be done to educate and aware the students also the family members regarding dental fluorosis. Furthermore, proper health education, community education and health workers participation can have a rational control over the management of the disease.