Forensic Odontology: Knowledge and Attitude of Dental Students in Ajman University, United Arab Emirates

Raghad Hashim,Afraa Salah,Ruba Odeh

doi:10.2174/1874210602014010515

Abstract

Aims:The aims of this study were to assess dental students’ knowledge and attitude with regard to forensic odontology and to determine students’ opinions in the current dental curriculum.Methods:This cross-sectional study was conducted among dental students at one of the main dental colleges in the United Arab Emirates; only dental students on their final year and internship were invited to participate. An online self-administrated questionnaire was used, which consisted of a set of 15 questions. All the data were entered into Microsoft Excel and then transferred into SPSS.Results:A total of 276 dental students contributed to this study. The highest percentage of correct responses stated by the students was related to the estimation of individuals’ age and estimation of dental age based on radiograph and eruption status. However, there were clear deficiencies in students’ knowledge in relation to other aspects such as gender identification and lip-print, palatal rugae as an indicator in forensic identification. A high percentage (84.8%) had no formal education in the field of forensic odontology. Moreover, 93.1% of the students agreed that their present knowledge about forensic odontology is inadequate. Most of the participants (95.0%) agreed upon the necessity of adding a module on forensic odontology to the current curriculum.Conclusion:Our study revealed inadequate knowledge among dental students in relation to forensic odontology. This lack of knowledge among them attributed to the lack of formal training, and lack of forensic odontology as a part of dental curriculum. Forensic odontology must be added to the undergraduate curriculum as a separate subject to enrich students’ knowledge and awareness toward medico-legal cases in their future careers.

Highlights

Forensic odontology is defined by the World Dental Federation as that branch of dentistry that deals with the proper investigation of dental evidence and with the appropriate evaluation and presentation of dental findings so as to ease the justice system [1]
The highest percentage of correct replies was reported in Question 1 (245, 88.8%), 2 (230, 83.3%) and 3 (237, 85.9%), which was all related to the estimation of individuals’ age and estimation of dental age based on radiograph and eruption status
This shows that dental students had knowledge deficiencies that were mainly related to the significance of forensic odontology on other features such as gender identification, lip-print, and palatal rugae as an indicator in forensic identification and documentation

Summary

Introduction

Forensic odontology is defined by the World Dental Federation as that branch of dentistry that deals with the proper investigation of dental evidence and with the appropriate evaluation and presentation of dental findings so as to ease the justice system [1]. This makes dental professionals exceptional and more important than others, especially in disastrous events [2]. Dental records play a significant role in cadaver identification, which has been totally disintegrated and is difficult to identify visually When this happens, a range of dental identification methods are used. Due to dentists’ negligence of maintaining proper records, resulting in ambiguity, dental identification sometimes becomes hard to achieve [7]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion