Objective:

To determine the prevalence of dental trauma in patients who consulted at a pediatric dentistry specialty clinic.

Materials and methods:

This was a retrospective cross-sectional study in which we reviewed 309 clinical files of patients from 2 to 12 years of age who consulted at the Pediatric Specialty Dentistry at a public university in Toluca, Mexico. The dependent variable was the prevalence of dental trauma. The independent variables included in the study were: patient's age and sex. Statistical analysis was performed using nonparametric tests in Stata 11.

Results:

The average age was 5.71 ± 2.43 years and 50.8% were male. The prevalence of dental trauma was 12.0% (95% CI = 8.3 - 15.6). In the bivariate analysis, despite the fact that males had a prevalence of dental trauma of 14.0% and among women it was 9.9%, these differences were not statistically significant (p = 0.262). It was observed that children with dental trauma were younger (average age = 4.74 ± 1.86) than those who did not present dental trauma (average age = 5.84 ± 2.47) (p = 0.0166). When performing the non-parametric trend test, it was noted that the decrease in the prevalence of dental trauma was significant (p = 0.026).

Conclusions:

The prevalence of dental trauma in this sample of children was 12%. No difference was observed according to sex. Younger patients presented more dental trauma than older ones.

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