Condições de saúde bucal e sua relação com desempenho e absenteísmo escolar de crianças e adolescentes: uma revisão sistemática

Abstract

The objective of the study was to perform a systematic review on the influence of the relationship between oral health status (dental caries, gingivitis, trauma and toothache) with school performance and school absenteeism in children and adolescents. The electronic research was carried out in the Medline, SCOPUS, Web of Science, ScienceDirect and LILACS databases to identify epidemiological studies concomitantly reporting oral health measures and school performance of the participants and / or school absenteeism. Studies involving participants 18 years of age or younger evaluated in relation to oral health measures (dental caries, gingivitis, trauma and toothache) were selected, concomitantly with information regarding the school performance and absenteeism of these participants. Observational studies (cross-sectional, case-control and cohort) and clinical trials published in any language were considered eligible. The articles included were selected by three reviewers independently, the presence of disagreements was resolved with a fourth reviewer. The methodological quality of the selected studies was evaluated through the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale, which evaluates the risk of bias and a meta-analysis was performed to obtain combined estimates (Chance Ratio (OR) and Confidence Intervals (CI) of 95%) between oral health, school performance and school absenteeism. To combine the findings extracted from the selected studies, a total of eighteen studies were included, of these, fifteen studies were used for the meta-analysis. Most of the studies were rated as moderate quality. Children with one or more decayed teeth had a higher probability of poor school performance (OR = 1.44 95% CI: 1.24-1.64) and poor school absenteeism (OR = 1.57 95% CI: 1.08-2.05) than children free of caries. Poor parents' perception of the child's oral health increased the odds of poorer school performance (OR = 1.51 95% CI: 1.10-1.92) and poor school absenteeism (OR = 1.35 95% CI: 1.14 -1.57). It is concluded that children and adolescents with dental caries and those who report poor oral health have poor school performance and poor school absenteeism.