Knowledge and awareness of dental implants among undergraduate dental students

Abstract

Introduction: As we know that students doing graduation in dentistry will be future dentists, they should have thorough knowledge about latest technologies in dentistry for treatment of missing teeth. It is the responsibility of these budding dentists for educating the common man about new technologies in dentistry. Thus this study was done to find that how many dental students know about dental implants. Materials and Methods: Our study was a cross-sectional one to find out how many dental students were aware about dental implants from first and second year of a tertiary care Dental College and Research Institute at Bahadurgarh, Haryana. A total of 200 dental students were included in the study. Self-explanatory questionnaire forms which included 5 questions about implants were used for evaluation. Percentage of different responses was calculated to show the results. Results: The present study gives information about dental undergraduates of first and second year students’ knowledge and awareness about dental implants for the treatment of missing teeth. Out of a total of 200 students, 187 returned the completely filled questionnaire. Out of them only 11(5.88%) did not know about implants, rest 176 (94.12%) were aware of implants. Out of these 176 subjects the rest of the questions were asked and percentage calculated as depicted in table. Conclusion: After conducting the present study, it is recommended that the knowledge about dental implants in the curriculum of first and second year dental students needs to be increased, if we want the future dentists to be well informed and confident regarding dental implant therapy. Keywords: Implants, knowledge, awareness, missing teeth.