Assessment of the knowledge of pediatricians and dentists about the effects of antibiotics to the condition of permanent teeth hard tissues in early childhood

Relevance of the problem and aim of the work. Dental hard tissue anomalies are one of the most common children‘s oral health problems in the world. Many studies have shown that enamel development is sensitive to the effects of external factors and antibiotics. The use of these medications in early childhood can be a threat to developing teeth. The purpose of this work was to evaluate and compare the knowledge of pediatricians and dental practitioners in Kaunas city about the effect of antibiotics in early childhood on the status of children‘s permanent tooth hard tissue. Material and methods. In Kaunas outpatient clinics individual questionnaires were distributed to dentists and pediatricians. Questionnaires are also distributed at the private dental clinics in Kaunas. The pediatricians filled out 70 questionnaires, dentists 84. After completing the questionnaire data in Microsoft Excel 2016, a statistical analysis of the SPSS program was carried out. To determine whether the data is statistically significant, the Chi-square criterion was used. In the assessment of the results, the level of statistical reliability is 0.05. Results. 94 percent of dentists would prescribe amoxicillin for children under 3 years old for inflammatory dental caries complications and only 6% of participants would prescribe phenoxymethylpenicillin. There is a statistically significant relationship between the allocation of antibiotics and the age and workplace of doctors (p<0.05). 91.4 percent of pediatricians would prescribe amoxicillin for a child under 1 year old for typical bacterial upper respiratory tract infection. A statistically significant increase in the number of dental practitioners in comparison with pediatricians suggests that the use of amoxicillin up to 1 year can influence the development of permanent dental hard tissue anomalies (p