Effectiveness of oral health education in children - a systematic review of current evidence (2005-2011).

Background: So that resources and manpower are allocated in a way of most benefit to the population, systematic review of available evidence on the effectiveness of programmes and interventions is required.

Objectives: To assess the quality of evidence presented in studies carried out to investigate the effectiveness of oral health education in children.

Methods: The MEDLINE (PubMed) bibliographic database was searched for English-language articles published from 2005 to 2011. Fifty-five articles were identified by the literature search, and the relevance of each article was determined by examining the title and the abstract. Sixteen original research studies met the inclusion criteria. These articles were read in full and scored independently by two reviewers, with scoring based on predetermined criteria. Articles scoring less than 10 were excluded from the study. For each paper that achieved a validity score of more than 10 (n = 11), data concerning the objectives of the intervention, the types and numbers of participants and the outcomes were extracted from the article. Considering the absence of homogeneity among the articles (as a result of variation in the age of subjects, type of intervention and outcome measures) quantitative analysis was not conducted. The publications were grouped based on their outcome measures: (i) plaque and gingival health; (ii) caries incidence; (iii) knowledge, attitude and oral health-related behaviour; and (iv) toothbrushing skills.

Results: The results of this analysis suggest that further efforts are required to synthesise, systematically, current information about dental health education, along with the maintenance of rigorous scientific standards in research.