engleski

Knowledge about traumatic dental injuries: a survey of Croatian pediatricians

Aim: Dental trauma is one of the important oral health problems in adolescent and childhood period. This cross-sectional study has assessed the level of knowledge of Croatian pediatricians concerning the management of dental trauma. Materials and methods: A questioner-based study has assessed personal and professional characteristics, knowledge and experience with dental injuries among 186 pediatricians. The data have been evaluated by the Student-T test or one-way ANOVA, with Tukey’s post-hoc. The level of significance was set at P ≤ 0.05. Results: The overall mean self-reported knowledge of dental trauma management was 3.58 ± 1.53, with a maximum possible score of seven. Better knowledge has been observed among male pediatricians (3.89 ± 1.44 vs. 3.35 ± 1.56, P = 0.016), those who have witnessed dental injuries (3.95 ± 1.44 vs. 3.28 ± 1.54, P = 0.003), and who have had more than ten years of paediatric practices compared to those who have had less (3.98 ± 1.60 vs. 3.26 ± 1.49, P = 0.027). Results of multiple linear regression analysis have showed significant dependence of measured overall dental injuries management knowledge score with paediatrician’s practice settings (b = -0.254, P = 0.002) and the number of treated patients per day (b = -0.187, P = 0.030). Conclusion: Paediatricians have moderate knowledge regarding preliminary care of traumatic dental injuries. Dental trauma emergency management should be recommended as part of their educational training.

dental trauma ; knowledge ; pediatricians

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