Prevalence of dental and mucosal lesions among the pediatric population who attended the emergency department of a general hospital

Abstract

Background. The high prevalence of oral pathology in children encourages to gain further understanding on their man-ifestations and urgent nature, objective of the present study Methodology. Cross-sectional study that included patients aged <14 years of age who attended an emergency department over a one-year period. The relationship between the variables collected and oral pathology was analyzed. Results. Fifty-five patients were included, 45.5% girls, mean age 4.11 years (10 days to 13 years). Overall, mucosal pathology (74.5%) prevailed over dental ones, and lesions of infectious origin (54.6%) over the traumatic ones (14.5%). Dental pathology (50% toothache and 35.7% infections) was significantly associated with being >6 years (66.7 vs 10%), pain (40.7 vs 10.7%) and absence of fever (37.9 vs 11.5%). Mucosal pathology (61% infections: 53.7% viral and 31.7% due to herpangina) was significantly associated with being ≤6 years (60 vs 6.7%) and having fever (76.9 vs 17.2%). Six traumatic lesions on the mucosa and two on the teeth were observed; significantly more patients attended the emergency room within 24 hours (median =1 hour) than in the case of infection (100 vs 51.7%). Being ≤6 years was significantly associated with fever, mucosal pathology, mucosal infection, and herpangina, and being >6 years was associated with pain, previous antibiotic treatment and at discharge, and previous NSAID regimen. Conclusions. The analyzed pediatric oral pathologies treated in the emergency department are of mucosal and infectious origin. Dental disease prevail in children >6 years of age and mucosal lesions in those ≤6 years; no sex differences are observed.