Serious games for children’s oral hygiene education: An integrative review and application search

Abstract

This article aims to perform an integrative review on publications that discuss the use of serious games focused on education of children’s oral hygiene and a search for available apps with this same purpose. An integrative peer review was conducted in the databases IBECS, LILACS, SCIENCE DIRECT, SciELO, PUBMED, SCOPUS, MEDLINE and Scholar Google, from January to November of 2017 and in parallel a search of available applications on the Android® platform, and websites of computer science, such as the IEEE Xplore. In the integrative review, 12 articles were selected that fulfilled the inclusion criteria. In searches on websites, 11 games were classified as serious games aimed for oral hygiene. A total of 284 apps were identified at Play Store®, with predominance for interventionist activity in dental offices, with pain, dental cavity and trau-ma being the main plots. Few applications focused on oral hygiene education are available. As for in-tended audience, there is the prevalence of chil-dren’s public. Despite the scarcity of publications on the subject, exploring technological resources as educational options for children’s oral hygiene indicate an area of knowledge with academic potential and possible applications for public health.