Causes and prevalence of dental and oral soft tissue injuries in school children in Zagreb, Croatia

The purpose of this study was to identify the etiology and types of traumatic dental injuries in permanent teeth, as well as the presence of oral soft-tissue injuries among school children in Zagreb, Croatia. A retrospective study was conducted at Department of Pediatric Dentistry, University Dental Clinic in Zagreb, Croatia using documentation on 319 patients (203 male and 116 female) aged 7 to 16 years with injuries of permanent teeth recorded between February 2009 and January 2013. Trauma was seen in 542 permanent teeth, yielding a mean of 1.7 injured permanent teeth per child. The majority of children sustained tooth injury at the age of nine. The most frequently aff ected teeth were maxillary central incisors (81%), followed by maxillary lateral incisors and mandibular central incisors as least often aff ected. Traumatic dental injuries involved hard dental tissue and pulp tissue that were twice as frequently aff ected as periodontal tissue. The most commonly observed traumatic dental injuries of the hard dental tissue and pulp was enamel-dentin fracture without pulp exposure, while subluxation was the most common type of periodontal tissue injury. The main cause of tooth injury was fall and the majority of injuries occurred at school. Of all patients included in the study, 132 (41.4%) had also oral soft-tissue injuries. Comparing the group of children with traumatic dental injuries and soft-tissue injuries and the group of children with traumatic dental injuries without soft-tissue injuries, a statistically signifi cant diff erence was found in the time that had elapsed from the injury to initial treatment (P<0.01).

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