Parental acceptance toward behavior guidance techniques for pediatric dental visits: a meta-analysis

ObjectiveThe systematic review aimed to compare agreement with behavior guidance techniques (BGT) between parents of children with special health care needs (SHCN) and those non-SHCN. MethodsA structured search of Cochrane Library, Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences, PubMed, PsycInfo, Scopus, Web of Science, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database, Opengrey and Google Scholar was taken up to October 2020. Two authors selected studies independently, extracted the data, assessed the studies methodological quality using the Joanna Briggs scale and the Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE). ResultsForty-eight studies covering the parents agreement with BGT were included and 41 were retained for random-effects proportion meta-analysis. The methodological quality assessment varied from low to high. Among the parents of non-SHCN children, the agreement with BGT varied from 84.1% (95% CI: 75.8-90.9; p<0.001; I2 93.3%) for tell-show-do to 25.7% (95% CI: 17.8-34.4; p<0.001; I2 90.4%) for passive protective stabilization, without hand-over-mouth. Among the parents of children with SHCN, the acceptance of BGT varied from 89.1% (95% CI: 56.1-99.7; p<0.001; I2 95.7%) for tell-show-do to 29.1% (95% CI: 11.8-50.0; p=0.001; I2 84.8%) to general anesthesia. ConclusionThere is very low certainty in evidence that both the parents of children SHCN and non-SHCN were more likely to agree with basic BGT and that they were less likely to agree with the advanced ones.