Assening Parents acceptance level for different behavior managment technigues for children

Different behavior management techniques have been used in children to perform dental treatments. With the increased role of parents in decision making regarding their children, their acceptance of different behavior management techniques received more attention. The present study assessed the acceptance of routine behavior management techniques by parents attending the department of Pediatric Dentistry, Dental School of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences in 2008-2009.Methods and materials:In this descriptive, non randomized study, 63 parents (49 mothers, 14 fathers) with no history of dental treatments for their children were included. Parents received information about tell-showdo (TSD), voice control (VC), premedication, physical restraint, hand over mouth (HOM) and modeling techniques by using images in clinical environment. They were instructed on advantages and disadvantages of each technique. Parents agreement of each technique was determined by using 10-cm visual analogue scale (VAS) in which the first and end points showed complete agreement and disagreement respectively. Data were subjected to one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and student t tests.

The TSD technique received the highest acceptance with the mean value of 9.63. The modeling, premedication, VC, physical restraint and HOM techniques ranked the next orders with the mean values of 9.24, 8.21, 5.86, 2.92 and 1.73 respectively. Fathers accepted aggressive techniques like physical restraint (P<0.02) and HOM (P<0.02) more than mothers, with no significant difference regarding other studied techniques. Furthermore no significant differences were found regarding parents’ education level and number of their children with the acceptance of different behavior management techniques. Only a significant relationship was found between parents’ age and their acceptance of HOM technique.

Under this study limitation, parents attending dental school of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences accepted most of behavior management techniques and tended to cooperate with the dentist although none of these techniques received their complete acceptance. The mostly accepted technique was TSD and the results were similar to that of previous studies.