TITLE:
Effectiveness of Oral Health Education Program on Prevention of Periodontal Disease in Japanese Pregnant Women
AUTHORS:
Mayumi Noguchi, Akira Tagaya, Ayako Sakoda, Hitoshi Komatsuzawa, Natsumi Fujiwara, Motoyuki Sugai
KEYWORDS:
Periodontal Disease, Pregnancy, Oral Health, Educational Intervention, Toothpick Brushing Method
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Nursing,
Vol.6 No.4,
April
19,
2016
ABSTRACT: The prevalence of periodontal disease among pregnant women increases with gestational age. Therefore, oral health education in the early stage of pregnancy should prevent periodontal disease and decrease the risk of an adverse pregnancy outcome such as preterm delivery and low birth weight. However, there has been no study on oral health care intervention for prevention of periodontal disease during pregnancy. The purpose of this study was to examine the efficiency of an oral health education program on periodontal disease among Japanese low-risk pregnant women. A total of 207 pregnant women before 20 weeks of gestation were recruited. The first 131 of them were assigned to the control group and the remaining 76 to the experimental group. The experiment participants received an oral health education program including the toothpick brushing method in their early stage of pregnancy. Improvement of the self-assessment score of periodontal symptoms was used as a binary outcome variable. A logistic regression analysis indicated that the intervention (OR = 3.83) and proficiency of the toothpick brushing method (OR = 24.93) were statistically significant predictors of the outcome in the late stage of pregnancy. The positive outcome appeared after practice of the toothpick method brushing for 20 or more weeks, and was associated with the decrease in the log-transformed proportion of the count of Candida species in salivary microbiota (p = 0.026).