541 - Dental Caries Experience and Asthmatic Medications in Children ages 1-5

Purpose: Both dental caries and asthma are prevalent chronic diseases of childhood. These are both associated with poor quality of life, and are causes of chronic school absenteeism. In 2000-2001 59.8% of Kentucky’s third grade students had experienced treated or untreated decay. Forty two percent of Kentucky’s children have severe decay before reaching the age of five . The current prevalence of asthma in Kentucky for children under the age of 11 is10.6 %. Inhalers for asthma contain ingredients that can further impact the oral health in the pediatric population. They can affect salivary flow, cause dental erosion, oral candidiasis, periodontal disease and eventual tooth loss. This may not only impact a child’s primary dentition, but permanent dentition causing long-term effects. The purpose of this study is to examine the association between asthmatic medications and dental caries prevalence in children ages 1-5 years of age.

Methods: A survey completed by parents via REDCap regarding asthmatic inhalers will be utilized. Patients receive a comprehensive dental examination and an accurate dental history to determine dmft scores. Descriptive statistics for all variables will be used, and differences in prevalence will be analyzed using Fisher's Exact tests. All analysis will be performed using SAS 9.4, with a significance level of 0.05.

Results: Pending

Conclusions: Pending, however we believe that children increased use of asthmatic inhaler medication will have a positive correlation to caries experience as depicted by higher dmft.