Dental caries remains as the main oral condition with the greatest impact on children's quality of life.

PURPOSE: The objective of this study was to assess the negative impact of dental caries on the OHRQoL of 8- to 10-year-old Brazilian children.

METHODS: This population-based case-control study involved 546 children (8-10 years old), 182 cases with a high negative impact on OHRQoL and 364 controls with a low negative impact on OHRQoL. Children's OHRQOL was measured using the Child Perceptions Questionnaire (CPQ8-10). Cases and controls (1x2 ratio) were individually matched by school and gender. Dental caries experience, malocclusion, and traumatic dental injuries were used as independent variables. Dental examinations were carried out at school during daytime hours by two calibrated examiners (Kappa = 0.93-interexaminer and 0.95- intraexaminer). The data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, conditional bivariate and multiple logistic regression, with the significance level set at 5%.

RESULTS: There was no significant difference in traumatic dental injuries and malocclusion between the case and control groups (p>0.05). Children with DMFT/dmft ≥3 had a 2.06-fold (95%CI = 1.28-3.31, p = 0.003) greater chance of experiencing a high negative impact on OHRQoL than those with DMFT/dmft = 0.

CONCLUSION: Children with high dental caries experience are more likely to present a high negative impact on OHRQoL than those with no dental caries experience.