Impact of lockdown on children’s lifestyle and their collaboration during dental sessions

Abstract

AIM: To analyse lifestyle of Italian families during lockdown, evaluating its possible impact on the collaboration of children with the paediatric dentist and associated predictive factors. MATERIALS: Only patients aged between 3 and 16 years, who had started treatment before the lockdown and had spent this periodwith both parents were included in the study. The interviews were carried out using an anonymous questionnaire that assessed school and play activities, the type of diet, the time dedicated to home oral hygiene and the activities carried out with parents. Parents' work situation during lockdown was included to correlate it with time spent at home. The Frankl Behavior Rating Scale was used to determine the degree of cooperation during dental sessions pre- and post-lockdown. Chi-square test and Fisher's Exact tests were used to identify statistical associations of improvement with each categorical variable. Student's t-test was used to highlight the differences in mean values of continuous variables between subjects considered more cooperative and unimproved subjects. Hosmer-Lemeshow test was used to assess the goodness-of-fit of the model. Assumption of linearity of independent variables and log-odds were assessed by Box-Tidwell transformation. Final selection was carried out using the Akaike criterion and all statistical analyses were carried out using the STATA statistical software package. CONCLUSION: Changes in family routines and increased parental presence at home, during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, are associated with improved collaboration of children during dental sessions. A statistical association between the increase in time spent on oral hygiene and the increased presence of parents at home was found.