Relação entre a erupção dos dentes decíduos, sinais e sintomas e temperamento da criança

Abstract

There isn’t a consensus in the literature about the occurrence of signs and symptoms associated to deciduous teeth eruption. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the relation among deciduous teeth eruption, its signs and symptoms and the child’s temperament; to compare the signs and symptoms observed by the mothers with those obtained by the evaluator during clinical examination; and to assess the mothers’ perception and conduct in front of the signs and symptoms related to tooth eruption. This longitudinal study was composed of 30 mothers and/or guardians and their respective children. Data were collected with a questionnaire applied in the form of a standardized interview and clinical examinations, being tabulated as spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel®. In the second and third interviews, respectively, 83,33% and 85,71% of the mothers observed signs and symptoms, 40,00% and 42,86% observed tooth eruption and 80,00% and 100,00% associated the signs and symptons to the eruptive process. Regarding temperament, 93,33% of the children were classified by their mothers as "easy". The most prevalent signs and symptoms included excessive salivation (88,00% and 100,00%), trend for chewing objects (76,00% and 83,33%) and irritability (60,00% and 83,33%). The most reported conduct was the use of teething ring (79,16%). Even in the absence of erupted teeth, mothers observed signs and symptoms, associating them with tooth eruption; certain signs and symptoms observed by the mothers were also identified by the evaluator, and the majority of the former adopted a conduct in front of these signs and symptoms.