Access to dental services for children with intellectual and developmental disabilities - A scoping review.
Kids with IDD miss dental care mainly because dentists lack disability training—push for practitioner CE on IDD-specific issues.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Ummer-Christian et al. (2018) looked at 16 studies about kids with intellectual or developmental disabilities going to the dentist.
They wanted to map every barrier that keeps these children from getting regular dental care.
The team did a scoping review, which means they charted what is known without judging study quality.
What they found
Three big blocks showed up.
First, clinics are hard to enter: chairs move too high, lights too bright, and hallways too narrow for wheelchairs.
Second, parents do not know how to prep their child or what to ask the dentist.
Third, most dentists say they never learned how to treat patients with IDD.
How this fits with other research
Pimentel Júnior et al. (2024) asked the same question for autistic kids and added a fourth barrier: sensory overload.
They agree with Ummer-Christian et al. (2018) that dentist training is missing, but they also push for sensory-friendly rooms and staff who know ABA.
Nguyen et al. (2025) tested one fix: telehealth coaching for caregivers.
Twenty-nine of thirty adults with IDD finished exams without sedation, proving the skill-gap barrier can be removed.
Fortney et al. (2021) widened the lens to rural adults and found the same three blocks plus long drives, showing the barrier list lasts across the lifespan.
Why it matters
If you write a dental desensitization program, target the real culprits: clinic layout, parent prep, and dentist disability training.
Use the Nguyen et al. coaching script as a model and ask local dentists to watch it for CE credit.
One hour of your time can turn a lifetime of skipped cleanings into routine care.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Children with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) face considerable challenges in participating in dental services. These challenges include resource constraints and inadequate skills of health service providers to work with this population. AIM: The aim was to scope published studies that addressed access to dental services for children with IDD in order to determine the extent to which various barriers have been researched, using an access framework derived from the literature. Access was defined to include the six dimensions of accessibility, availability, affordability, accommodation, acceptability, and appropriateness. METHOD: Arksey and O'Malley's scoping review framework was used. Relevant databases (e.g., Medline) were searched for all empirical studies conducted from January 2000 to February 2017 that met inclusion criteria. Data were extracted along the six dimensions of the access framework. RESULTS: Sixteen international studies were identified which indicated common key barriers to dental service use: the difficulties of physical inaccessibility, lack of access to information among carers, lack of knowledge of disability issues, and low experience and skills in caring for children with IDD among dental practitioners. CONCLUSIONS: Key recommendations made were exploring dental practitioners' understanding of disability legislation and developing training for practitioners to expand on issues specific to IDD.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2018 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2017.12.022