Dental Pain Season in a Pediatric Dental Clinic Makkah, Saudi Arabia

Objective: Dental pain is the most common reason for dental visits among children in many regions in the world. The weather changes can change the health lifestyle by increasing drinking cold drinks which may cause dental hypersensitivity or misdiagnosed dental pulpitis due to the limited ability to describe the dental pain by the children. Most children cannot observe the decay in the early sage and they need indeed their parent to guide them in a healthy lifestyle. Subject and Methods: Data were collected retrospectively of 600 children from the dental records of new pediatric patients attending a clinic. The collected data included all months in 2022. The frequency of each invasive procedure in each month was calculated as well the gender and other demographic variables. Aim: To determine the highest frequency of dental pain attenders among children under 14 years old during the four seasons of 2022 and using these results to enhance our health services to design future plans. Result: The highest frequency of dental pain cases was in summer (84%) and the lowest was in Spring (16%). Conclusion: This study could be the first study aiming to investigate the dental pain patients flow regarding the four seasons. It has been done in Makkah in which the weather temperature can reach 50 degrees in the summer. Further studies with the same aim in a different weather condition are needed to compare our results and enhance our health services in the future. Conclusion: Dental pain season is in the summer in our paediatric dental clinic. The high frequency of dental pain cases during the summer could be a result of the health lifestyle related to the hot weather. Keywords: Dental pain season, paediatric dental clinic, Makkah