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Article Type

Original Article

Section/Category

Epidemiology and Dental Public Health

Abstract

Objective To evaluate the effect of birth characteristics e.g. (birth weight) and feeding habits e.g. (feeding type) on the eruption of primary teeth of new-born infants. Subjects and Methods A cross-sectional study was designed to collect data for this study by using an interviewer-administered closed-ended questionnaire on 500 mothers of healthy infants who were in age group within the first week of birth to 24 months. Oral examination of those infants was done to ascertain the condition of eruption of primary teeth in addition to teething signs and symptoms. Result The mean time of the eruption of first deciduous tooth was 5.6 ± 3.8 months. There was a strong, significant association between time of eruption and age of infant (P < 0.001). First deciduous tooth eruption time was significantly prior in over birth weight infants (P-value < 0.001). There was a significant association between eruption time and height at examination time (P = 0.002). The present study shows a high prevalence of breast feeding among studied infants, also the high significant association between breast feeding and normal eruption time of primary teeth in comparison to mixed feeding, which shows a high significant association with late eruption time of primary teeth. Conclusion Based on the results of this study, the following conclusions can be derived: age of child, weight at birth, baby height at examination, and feeding type were the most independent factors affecting time of first primary tooth eruption.

Keywords

birth characteristics; time of eruption

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