Impacto da Hipomineralização de Molares e Incisivos na qualidade de vida de crianças de 8 a 10 anos de idade

Abstract

Molar incisor hypomineralization (MIH) is a enamel mineralization defect, of systemic origin, that affects one to four first permanent molars, frequently associated with affected incisors. Patients affected by MIH may present aesthetic compromise, when there is incisor involvement, functional compromise, involving pain and sensitivity in the hypomineralized teeth as well as more need for restorative treatment in these teeth, which could have an impact on the quality of life of these patients. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of MIH on oral health related quality of life in 8-10 year-old children. Sixty children with MIH, who was attending their first dental appointment at the clinic of the Pediatric Dentistry Department, were enrolled in the study. The control group consisted of sixty children matching age and gender. Two calibrated examiners assessed MIH and dental caries using EAPD and WHO criteria (DMFT index), respectively. The Child Perception Questionnaire (CPQ8-10) was used to evaluate the impact of MIH on the quality of life. CPQ8-10 consists of 29 questions divided among four domains: oral symptoms, functional limitation, emotional well-being, and social well-being. Non-parametric tests were used to test the association between CPQ and independent variables (MIH, affected incisors, molars severely affected, caries experience, treatment need, gender, and age). Poisson regression with robust variance was used for multivariate analysis to test the association between the CPQ8-10 domains and the independent variables in terms of rate ratio (RR) and 95% confidence interval (CI). Overall CPQ8-10, oral symptoms, and emotional well-being scores were significantly higher for children with MIH (p<0.05). The multivariate analysis showed that oral symptoms (RR: 1,37; 95%CI: 1,02 – 1,84) and functional limitation (RR: 1,56; 95%CI: 1,04 – 2,33) were significantly affected by the presence of severely affected molars with treatment need. Based on the data from the present study, it was concluded that MIH had a negative impact on the quality of life in 8-10 year-old children, who showed higher values of CPQ8-10, and the presence of severely affected molars with treatment need represented the main impact factor.