ORAL CANCER: STUDY ABOUT AWARENESS AND KNOWLEDGE AMONG DENTAL STUDENTS AND PRIMARY HEALTH CARE DENTISTS IN BRAZIL

Abstract

<h3>Objectives</h3> The aim of this study was to assess the knowledge and awareness of dental students and primary health care dentists about oral cancer. <h3>Study Design</h3> A cross-sectional questionnaire study was conducted with 541 students and 82 dentists. The participants answered 27 questions about attitudes, practices, self-perception, and oral cancer knowledge. Scores from 1 to 10 were calculated. <h3>Results</h3> Most participants reported not having received training to identify lymphadenopathies and had never performed biopsy. Students who have oral medicine practice in their institution's curriculum (<i>P</i> = .024) and dentists with more years of training (<i>P</i> = .016) felt more capable of performing a biopsy. As also to detect oral lesions (<i>P</i> < .001). The score for oral cancer knowledge for students was 7.01 ± 2.15 and that for dentists was 7.81 ± 1.467. <h3>Conclusions</h3> Interestingly, even considering that the score was satisfactory, the lack of understanding about oral cancer may be the cause of the delay in diagnosis of these patients. Therefore, it is necessary to give greater prominence in the approach of the curricular contents referring to oral medicine during graduation and have meetings on the diagnosis of oral cancer.