[Mothers' perception of dental eruption syndrome and its clinical manifestation during childhood].

OBJECTIVE

This study was aimed at identifying primiparous and multiparous mothers perceptions about tooth eruption and related symptoms as well as discussing such events occurrence in the light of the relevant literature.

METHODS

The research adopted a qualitative, descriptive design; 61 mothers who had already given birth to babies aged 3 to 12 months old were studied. Their children were outpatients at Rio Grande do Norte Federal Universitys Paediatric Hospital in Natal, RN, Brazil. A semi-structured interview was used for collecting data. ALCESTE 4.5 software was used for analysing data based on primiparous and multiparous mothers as variables; the former term referred to mothers bearing a child for the first time and multiparous to those who had born more than one child.

RESULTS

Symptomatology was related by 75 % of the mothers interviewed here. The perception of the mothers from both groups probably pointed to a lack of knowledge regarding child development and the process leading to the presence of clinical symptoms due to tooth eruption. However, the great difference lay in how this reality was perceived; mothers having a single child clearly affirmed that knowledge was acquired by common sense, whilst mothers of more than one child reproduced such knowledge according to their experience with previous children.

DISCUSSION: It was concluded that during this phase of tooth eruption, professionals must adopt a firm and defined position based on the literature providing evidence of the real relationship between tooth eruption and general symptoms, paying attention to every patient and their complaints to demystify and better understand this whole process.