CHILD ORAL HEALTH CARE STRATEGIES IN PRIMARY HEALTH CARE

AN INTEGRATIVE REVIEW

Abstract

The National Oral Health Policy recommends that the baby’s first dental consultation be done between the birth of the first deciduous tooth (generally at 6 months) and 12 months of age. Health professionals, when caring for a child, need to consider their family context, with their own peculiarities and functioning. Besides, the attention to children’s oral health involves the education and motivation of the entire family. In this context, the objective of the present article was to evaluate, through an integrative literature review, the child oral health care strategies carried out in the Primary Care of the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS). Searches were performed in PubMed, Embase, SciELO and Google Scholar databases. Publications were evaluated by means of reading the abstracts. Publications were selected if they: (1) had as their place of study health services at SUS; (2) presented child oral health care actions or strategies; (3) comprised the age group of up to 12 years. The searches resulted in 833 publications. In the first step, 772 publications were excluded after reading the title, leaving 58 for reading the abstract, of which 25 were excluded. In the second stage, after reading in full, 12 publications were removed, resulting in 21 publications. The results showed that prenatal care, together with the childcare routine, is effective for the promotion of healthy habits, reducing the chances of caries and other oral diseases. Eight main oral health care strategies for the population in this life cycle were identified: early care, bonding, multidisciplinary care, continuity of care, dental prenatal care, active search of patients and the incorporation into two programs of the Ministry of Health: Family Health Program and Comprehensive Child Health Care Program.