Evaluation of Parental Perception Regarding Smile of Children According to Visual Analog Scale

Abstract

Introduction: Most patients go to dental offices nowadays looking for an esthetically pleasant smile, being stimulated by the esthetic patterns suggested by the society which associate a beautiful smile to success. The role of a dentist is to provide the best functional as well as esthetic restoration to the child as per his needs. Subjects and Methods: It is a questionnaire-based observational study. Questionnaire-based photographs (six in number) distributed among 400 parents who came with their children (<5 years) to the malls of Vadodara city. Each photograph showed different conditions of smile, namely, nonspaced dentition, spaced dentition, carious teeth, traumatic injury, teeth with plaque, and missing teeth. Each parent was asked to grade them in ascending order of appearance of the photographs as per their esthetic view. The parents were also asked to grade numerically from 1 to 6 in ascending order. Results: A descriptive statistical analysis was carried out in the present study. Results on continuous measurements were presented on mean ± standard deviation and results on categorical measurements were presented in number (%). Perception of esthetics given by parents with preference and position is as follows: nonspaced dentition, teeth with plaque, spaced dentition, traumatic injury, carious teeth, and missing teeth. Conclusions: It was concluded that parents are more concerned about the cleanliness and structure of their child’s teeth which can create and play a role in esthetics.