Perfil de saúde da criança vigiada em Cuidados de Saúde Primários

Abstract

Childhood obesity and dental caries became an important problem to public health. Changes in visual acuity and sleep disturbances in the children are thematic less developed in research but as important on prevention and the treatment of some situations. The excess of weight, changes on oral health, changes on visual acuity and disturbances in sleep are worrying situations, because they can bring complications to the children’s health in their adult life, so it’s very important that health professionals know the children’s profile and their daily habits and hygiene health. It’s also important to know that, considering the management of health care in Portugal, because prevention will reduce the budget in future treatments which is a vital question to the economic system. Considering the management of the health care in Portugal, it’s also important this knowledge, because we can reduced considerably the costs on future treatments with prevention, which is a vital question to economic system. Therefore, we performed a quantitative descriptive study, in a convenience sample of 166 (one hundred and sixty-six) children aged between 4(four) and 18(eighteen), 91(ninety-one) boys and 75(seventy-five) girls who attended the Health Units, Primary Health Care (PHC), of the Municipality of Viseu. To do that we used a questionnaire and proceeded to anthropometric assessment, by the observation of the oral cavity to detect dental caries, and with the Snellen’s scale to assess the visual acuity. Children who attended the services in the Primary Health Care (PHC) have normal weight, don’t have dental caries and may have, or not, visual acuity problems or changes/disturbances in sleep. 19,2% of the children have obesity and 20,5,7% overweight, while in girls the prevalence of obesity is 18,6 % and overweight is 22,7 % for boys is 19,8% and 18,7 % respectively; dental caries is 17;5 % , and the prevalence of dental caries and filled teeth, simultaneously, is 21,2%; 41,6 % of the children have changes in vision and 47,8 % of them have visual alterations that were already diagnosed (they already wear glasses); 44% have sleep disorders and difficulties falling asleep, 53% of these problems are related with waking up during the night and 34,3% when analyzing the quality of sleep. We concluded that the fact that a child has brothers with vision problems, may be an issue indicating that the same child may experience problems in visual acuity, that sex is a factor in the central changes in vision, and the girls have a greater probability of having changes in visual acuity and a child without brothers has a greater chance of having alterations in the quality of sleep.

Date of Award	13 Dec 2013
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Nuno Filipe Rosa Melão (Supervisor)