Evaluation of Saudi Dental Students’ Awareness About Preventive Dentistry

Aim: Knowledge and oral health behavior of dental students play an important role in oral health education of patients and community at large. It is therefore important that their own oral health behavior conforms to expectations of the population. Hence, the aim of this study was to evaluate the awareness of future dental graduates towards preventive dentistry regarding gender and level of education.
Materials and methods: The self-administered English- language structured questionnaire had two parts: The first part included gender and year of study. The second part included 9 questions to evaluate knowledge about preventive dentistry. The data were recorded and analyzed using the SPSS software. The level of statistical significance was set at P<0.05.
Results: This cross-sectional study was performed on 207 dental students of King Saud University, dental college, Riyadh with a response rate of 80.5%.
Majority of dental students were aware about the role of sugar in caries process. Generally, female students were more knowledgeable than male students in preventive dentistry. Fifth year students were more knowledgeable about the three fundamental issues of preventive dentistry, in comparison to fourth year students.
Conclusions: Dental students of King Saud University Riyadh had a sufficient level of awareness about preventive dentistry but female students were not aware enough about the role of fluoride in the prevention of dental caries.