Evaluation of the Awareness of the Yazd Medical Students about Common Oral Diseases and its Relationship with General Health of the Body

Considering the importance of oral health as a part of general health and the role of physicians in community health, the present study was conducted to investigate the relationship between common oral diseases and general body health from the perspective of medical students in Yazd City in 2018.

In this descriptive cross-sectional study, 210 internship and pre-internship students of Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences in Yazd Cityin 2018 were selected randomly and their knowledge about common oral and dental diseases and its relationship with general body health was assessed through a valid and reliabile questionnaire consisted of 10 questions. Data were entered into SPSS version 16 statistical software and analyzed using descriptive statistics and T-test.

In the present study, 191 internship and pre-internship students completed the research questionnaire, of which 101 were female (52.8 %) and 90 were male (47.1%). The mean age of the students was 24.07 ±1.92. Their mean grade point average at the time of the study was 15/95±1/28. The mean score of their knowledge of oral diseases was 9.79 ± 3.27 with a range of 1 to 19. There was no statistically significant relationship between the mean score of knowledge in terms of age, sex, semester and grade point average (p˃0/05).

The results showed that the mean score of knowledge of the internship and pre-internship students about common oral diseases and its relationship with general health is low. Therefore, it seems necessary to improve the level of knowledge of medical students in this regard by adding the mentioned topics to the educational curriculum of medical students.