Effectiveness of Different Educational Methods on Oral Health in 7-13-year-old Visually Impaired Children in Tehran: A Randomized Trial

Abstract

Background: Conventional oral health education is not suitable for visually impaired children. Objectives: Considering the importance of oral health, this study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of different educational methods on oral hygiene status. Methods: Following a clinical trial design, 88 visually impaired children, aged 7 to 13 years, living in Tehran were recruited and randomly allocated to four groups of verbal-tactile, verbal-braille, multisensory, and control. Initially, all children were well informed about the importance of oral hygiene; then, the baseline levels of plaque score and gingivitis were recorded by Silness & Loe plaque index and Loe & Silness gingival index, respectively. Experimental groups received oral health education through different methods. The instructions were repeated after one month, and plaque and gingival indices were reevaluated after two months. Data analysis was administered by analysis of variance (ANOVA) and posthoc tests using SPSS 20.0. Results: After receiving the intervention, all groups showed a decrease in plaque and gingival indices, with the most reduction in the multisensory group (with a statistically significant difference (P = 0.0001) between multisensory & control for both plaque & gingival indices). The least change was observed in the verbal-braille group compared to the control (for plaque index and gingival index after two months (P = 0.04) and (P = 0.17), respectively). Conclusions: This study demonstrated that the multisensory method (verbal-tactile-braille) is the best option to educate visually impaired children, with significantly more acceptable results.