Assessing the knowledge and awareness of dentists on dental treatment for children under general anesthesia (GA)

This descriptive study was designed to assess the current Iranian Dentists’ knowledge and awareness on dental treatment for children under GA. A cross sectional study was designed with a sample size of 290 dentists who were selected from those attended the 43rd annual dental congress of Iranian dental Association. Data collection was attempted using a questionnaire designed specifically for this study. The questionnaire consisted of 26 questions of which 16 were knowledge base and the rest of 10 were attitude related ones. Basic statistics along with Mann Whitney test were employed to analyze the data. From 218 participants 75% were male and 25% female. Of these only 45% stated to have children on their patients list. Majority had received their knowledge on GA from their Dental degree course with 94% having had no personal experience at all. Surprisingly 75% of the dentists had expressed a feeling that GA additional education is needed for their daily practice. Average understanding for knowledge on GA indications was 2.45 and 2.56 for contraindications. For the attitude questions 70% were at the intermediate level, 28% at high level and only 8% had little interest towards GA dental treatment in children. No significant correlation was found between the qua;ity of knowledge and attitude of dentists participated in this study. This was the case for age, gender, university, city of work and year of education.