Introduction:

the high prevalence of oral disease in adolescents, together with the direct or indirect association between disease and lifestyle habits, call for the implementation of oral health prevention and promotion strategies at the school, household and public health levels. Our main objective was to design a questionnaire on lifestyle habits in adolescents to determine their prevalence and assess their association with oral health.

Materials and methods:

we conducted a cross-sectional observational study in 39 preadolescent and adolescent students aged 12 to 17 years. We developed a 42-item questionnaire and administered it to participating students. We analysed the obtained responses using contingency tables, defining statistical significance as a p-value of <0.05.

Results:

we found that the frequency of brushing was correct in 54% of participating students, while only 48.7% visit the dentist every year. We found a significant association between nationality and visits to the dentist (p = 0.02) and between the frequency of brushing with: eating breakfast (p = 0.005), consumption of industrial baked goods or snacks (p = 0.02) and consumption of sugary drinks (p = 0.011), the use of computer, television and gaming consoles (p = 0.049), and a sedentary lifestyle (p = 0.00).

Conclusion:

we found statistically significant associations between lifestyle habits and oral health. The development and implementation of oral health prevention and promotion strategies targeting the adolescent population is essential in order to establish adequate habits that will not have a detrimental effect on the general health of the adolescent.

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