The Effect of Oral Health Education in Pregnancy

Periodontal diseased during pregnancy are associated with many unpleasant prenatal consequences including preeclampsia, preterm labor, and low birth weight (LBW). Treatment of such diseases and observance of oral and dental hygiene may to some large extent prevent such consequences. Unfortunately previous studies have shown that pregnant women have very little knowledge of oral and dental health implications. Given the fact that pregnancy my be a unique opportunity to initiate correct hygienic behaviors in young women, this paper has focused on studying the effects of oral and dental health education during pregnancy.

In this single blind clinical trial study,140 pregnant women receiving care from Khaje Rabi Regional Health Center in Mashhad city who were members of a community based multi-center were chosen by systematic clustering methods and randomly allocated into test and control groups. After intervention, two questionnaires were completed for demographic and pregnancy details of the participants. Knowledge, health belief and health behavior were assessed before intervention. The test group had two educational sessions lasting 1 hour, focused on oral and dental health and especially on oral and dental health during pregnancy. women in the control group received no education. Knowledge, health belief and health behavior were assessed immediately after and one month after intervention of all participants. Analysis of data was done using SPSS, t-test and chi-square tests.