Background:

The high prevalence of oral pathology in children encourages to gain further understanding on their manifestations and urgent nature, objective of the present study

Methodology:

Cross-sectional study that included patients aged <14 years of age who attended an emergency department over a one-year period. The relationship between the variables collected and oral pathology was analyzed.

Results:

Fifty-five patients were included, 45.5% girls, mean age 4.11 years (10 days to 13 years). Overall, mucosal pathology (74.5%) prevailed over dental ones, and lesions of infectious origin (54.6%) over the traumatic ones (14.5%). Dental pathology (50% toothache and 35.7% infections) was significantly associated with being >6 years (66.7 vs 10%), pain (40.7 vs 10.7%) and absence of fever (37.9 vs 11.5%). Mucosal pathology (61% infections: 53.7% viral and 31.7% due to herpangina) was significantly associated with being ≤6 years (60 vs 6.7%) and having fever (76.9 vs 17.2%). Six traumatic lesions on the mucosa and two on the teeth were observed; significantly more patients attended the emergency room within 24 hours (median =1 hour) than in the case of infection (100 vs 51.7%). Being ≤6 years was significantly associated with fever, mucosal pathology, mucosal infection, and herpangina, and being >6 years was associated with pain, previous antibiotic treatment and at discharge, and previous NSAID regimen.

Conclusions:

The analyzed pediatric oral pathologies treated in the emergency department are of mucosal and infectious origin. Dental disease prevail in children >6 years of age and mucosal lesions in those ≤6 years; no sex differences are observed.