BackgroundThis study aimed to determine knowledge, attitude and practice of airborne and droplet isolation precautions among Dental Health Professionals (DHPs) (dental students, interns, practitioners and auxiliaries) during the outbreak of MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), corona virus infection in Riyadh city, Saudi Arabia. Material and Methods A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 406 dental health professionals (DHPs) working in selected dental facilities in Riyadh city, Saudi Arabia during the outbreak of MERS (April-June 2013). A structured, close-ended, self-administered questionnaire explored the knowledge, attitude, and practice towards droplet and isolation precautions. Collected data was subjected to descriptive statistics to express demographic information, mean knowledge score, mean attitude score and practice score of DHPs. Inferential statistics (Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal Wallis tests, p < 0.05) were used to examine differences between study variables. Spearman’s rho correlation was used to identify the association between the knowledge-attitude, knowledge-practice, and attitude-practice. Results A response rate of rate of 90.22% (406 out of 452) was obtained. The mean scores of knowledge, attitude and practice were 10.61 ± 1.19, 50.54 ± 7.53 and 8.50 ± 2.14 respectively. Spearman’s correlation test revealed a significant linear positive correlation between knowledge and attitude (r-0.501, P- 0.01), knowledge and practice (r-0.185, P-0.01) and attitude and practice (r-0.351, P- 0.01) of DHPs about airborne isolation precautions. Conclusions Dental health professionals considered in the present study showed good knowledge, positive attitude and good practice towards droplet and airborne isolation precautions during outbreak of MERS. Key words:Knowledge, attitude, practice, droplet, airborne, precaution, dental professionals.

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Background: Hollywood smile refers to the aesthetic development of dental appearance inspired by the beauty displayed by the movie actors. Therefore, the present study was conducted to determine the extent of social media effect on the decision making of university students towards selecting Hollywood smile as the choice of their aesthetic treatment. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted by utilizing a self-designed closed-ended questionnaire among under-graduate students from the various public as well as private universities of Riyadh city. The questionnaire was constructed online using Google forms and began with questions related to demographics; questions like Do you notice celebrity's smile on social media? Have you visited a dentist solely after getting inspired by a celebrity's smile? etc., Responses were on a 5-point likert scale ranging from highly dissatisfied or strongly disagree to highly satisfied or strongly agree whenever applicable. Chi-square test was used to compare the differences among the groups with the value of significance kept under 0.05 by using SPSS version 19. Results: The majority of the female participants reported noticing the celebrity's smile on social media. Influence by the celebrity smiles on social media was found more in the older age group participants. However, the term “Hollywood smile” was slightly more known among the younger aged participants. Conclusion: The overall effect of social media in decision making of opting for Hollywood smile was found to be moderate. More studies should be conducted to investigate how much social medial is effecting the perceptions of youngsters.

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