Dental utilization for Medicaid-enrolled children with cystic fibrosis

Abstract

Objectives: Despite a multitude of risk factors, children with cystic fibrosis (CF) have lower reported dental caries prevalence. A potential explanation is preventive dental care use, but no studies to date have examined dental use for children with CF. Methodology: Iowa Medicaid data were analyzed for children age 3 to 17 years (N = 156,268). Poisson regression models were used to compare utilization rates for any dental care and also for specific categories of dental care, by CF status. Results: Children with CF were significantly less likely to use any dental care than children without CF (incident rate ratio: 0.819, 95% CI: 0.80 to 0.84, p