EARLY CHILDHOOD CARIES AND BREASTFEEDING: INFORMATION AVAILABLE IN GOOGLE VERSUS SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE

Abstract

Objective: Investigate the sources and type of information available on the internet regarding the association between breastfeeding and dental caries.

Methodology: A cross-sectional study was conducted using the Google search engine to gather information on the association between breastfeeding and dental caries. The sample was composed of the first 100 search results. For each result, the following variables were collected: order of appearance, source of information, year, information on breastfeeding and caries (protective effect, risk factor, or undefined), and whether the result cites a scientific source. Statistical analysis involved the chi-square test to investigate whether the information available on the association between breastfeeding and dental caries varied in accordance with the source of information and the order of appearance of the result on the internet.

Results: The most frequent sources of information on the internet were blogs of healthcare providers (n=38), scientific articles (n=20), blogs/sites of laypersons (n=15), and undergraduate course completion papers (n=15). Only 31% of the results reported that breastfeeding is associated with the occurrence of early childhood caries and this result was significantly higher (p=0.004) when the source was a healthcare provider (34.2%) than a layperson (19.0%). The declaration that there is no association between exposure and outcome was more frequent in the first results compared to those that appeared subsequently (p=0.018).

Conclusion: Information available in Google on the association between breastfeeding and early childhood caries is not in agreement with the available scientific evidence, especially when laypersons are the source.