A Survey Of The Oral Habits Of ASD Children

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder with social communication deficits and repetitive stereotyped behaviors as typical symptoms, ASD children have difficulty in oral hygiene maintenance and high caries rate, this study investigates the differences in oral hygiene habits between ASD children with severe caries and normal children, and explores whether there are characteristic oral habits,for improving the caries situation. A self-designed, closed-ended questionnaire covering oral hygiene practices and eating habits was developed in Chinese to include 16 children with ASD who presented to our hospital with severe caries (ASD group) and 17 normal children without systemic disease (TD group). In the ASD group, 82% of the children had bad habits “containing rice” (P < 0.05), and 91% of the children ate sweets more than twice a day, which was higher than that of normal children. ASD children have relatively more poor eating habits and should have their diets modified.