Relationship between self-reported oral hygiene and clinical plaque index among adolescents in Isfahan

Introduction: Although though the best way to assess individual‟s oral hygiene is to measure plaque and calculus indices, various studies have evaluated an individual‟s self-report of oralhygiene behaviors. The aim of this study was to investigate diagnostic values of self-reporting tool and relationship between current oral self-care behaviors and plaque index (PI). Materials & Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 260 13-15-year-old students from girls‟ schools in Isfahan using two-stage randomized sampling. Data collection tools on oralhygiene habits were extracted based on available studies and presented in two versions for student and parent. Then, students‟ PI was measured by a trained and calibrated examiner using Silness and Loe PI. The frequency of oral-hygiene behaviors reported by parents and students with PI was measured by McNemar, Kappa and Mann Whitney tests with significance level of 0.05. Sensitivity and specificity of the tools were calculated based on the standard PI. Results: The PI mean (SD) was 1.07 ±0.5. There was a significant relationship between PI and self-reported toothbrushing status (p=0.017). The PI was higher in students with bad toothbrushing habits based on the reports of themselves and their parents as well as with bad flossing habits based on their parents‟ reports (p= 0.017, 0.001, 0.005). Diagnostic value of children‟s self-report and parental report about toothbrushing status indicated low sensitivity (about 35%) and high specificity (about 83%). Positive predictive value was approximately good (about 71%) and negative predictive value was low (about 52%). Diagnostic value of parental report about flossing status represented high sensitivity (85%) and low specificity (26%). Conclusion: Findings of this study suggested that among such population, students with bad toothbrushing habits based on parental and self-reports are more likely to have undesirable (moderate/poor) PI.