Status of Preventive Caries Management Skills of Clinical Students Studying in Various Dental Colleges in Karachi, Pakistan

Abstract

Background: Unlike in the past, caries nowadays, is stressed to be treated by employing preventive strategies. Though in many countries, treating caries by surgical intervention is reducing but surprisingly most dentists in Karachi, Pakistan continue to treat it by drilling and placing a restoration as primary measure. A question comes to one's mind is whether the graduating dentist from dental colleges in Karachi receive information and training to management caries using preventive strategies or not? This study therefore, was planned to assess the status of teaching about these preventive protocols. Clinical students of dental colleges were chosen as study subjects as they in few months' time become clinicians and practice what they have learnt in their colleges. Aims and Objectives: To assess the knowledge and practices of dental students regarding caries management and practices. Methods: A face and content validated and pretested questionnaire with close-ended questions was used as a study tool. 250 Clinical dental students studying in five dental colleges in Karachi were the study subjects. Results: 215 responses were received at a healthy response rate of 86 %. The most responding students have the knowledge about currently recommended caries preventive strategies but its clinical implementation is very low. Fissure sealing and fluoride applications are the only preventive measures followed by sizeable amount of the responders. Conclusion: Participants of this study despite having knowledge about preventive caries management don't practice it in their clinics. For its implementation, CRA based curricula should be introduced.

Evaluation of Final-Year Turkish Dental Students’ Knowledge, Attitude, and Self-Perceived Competency towards Preventive Dentistry

“…Innovations in dental curricula are critically important in order to prepare students, who have the required skills and knowledge to incorporate evidence-based approaches into their dental practice [7, 10, 11]. Using the CAMBRA, the implementation of Caries Management by Risk Assessment is a critical component in both the pediatric and general dentistry practice [2, 43, 44], as well as in the dental education [20–24, 45]. Thus, we chose to use the CAMBRA approach and its general principles in the development of measures used in this study.…”

“…In recent years, there has been growing interest in examining the knowledge, attitude, competence, and practice regarding the pediatric preventive dental care of clinical and senior dental students [12–20]. Studies examined the oral health attitude, behavior, and knowledge of dental students in Turkey, which highlighted the need for courses and comprehensive programs aiming to promote their oral care practices and preventive oral health knowledge [33, 46–48].…”

“…Most of the published studies conducted on dentist or dental students from different classes. Therefore, we compared our findings with the studies carried out among final- and clinical year students in different countries [12–14, 19, 20].…”

“…The PPKS scores ranged from 15 to 75, with higher scores indicating a higher level of knowledge regarding preventive dentistry. By the investigators, the initial item pool of 23 items was generated based on the pediatric CAMBRA protocol which consists of 4 basic steps including caries diagnosis, risk assessment, preventive and restorative care for specific management of dental caries [1, 3], and comprehensive reviews of published literatures and existing instruments [12, 13, 15, 16, 18–20, 31]. The face and content validity of the questionnaire was assessed by a group of experts consisting of one pedodontist, one dental public health specialist, and one biostatistician.…”

“…To date, many dental schools have integrated caries risk assessment and risk-based management into their clinical teaching using the Caries Management by Risk Assessment (CAMBRA), which is an evidence-based and patient-centered approach focuses on determining pathological and protective factors affecting the expression and management of the dental caries [20–24].…”