Knowledge about oral cancer among dental students and Primary Health Care dentists: A Brazilian study

Abstract

Purpose/objectives: The present study aims to evaluate the knowledge of dental students and dentists who work in Primary Health Care (PHC). These are professionals who work in the public basic health units regarding oral cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Methods:A cross-sectional and observational Brazilian study was conducted. A survey with 27 questions was carried out regarding the (i) demographic, academic, and professional data of the participants, (ii) attitudes, practices, and self-perception about their training, and (iii) knowledge about oral cancer. With the exception of one question regarding the clinical characteristics of oral cancer, all knowledge answers were graded as correct or incorrect. Grades were assigned to each participant according to their level of knowledge, and scores for each participant were calculated ranging from 1 to 10. Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to examine the difference in the knowledge score of oral cancer according to explanatory variables. The level of significance adopted was 5%. Results: The sample comprised 541 dental students and 82 PHC dentists. Most participants did not consider it appropriate or had not received training for palpation of lymph nodes or for identifying lymphadenopathies associated with oral cancer. Less than 20% of the participants had some kind of practice before and felt safe performing biopsy surgery. The average student score was 7.01 ± 2.15, and the average dentist score was 7.81 ± 1.467. Conclusion:Although the scores were satisfactory, most of the participants did not show adequate knowledge about biopsy and palpation of cervical lymph nodes.

Clinical competency of dental health professionals and students in diagnosing oral mucosal lesions

“…This improvement can be seen in each stage of their progress in the oral medicine and pathology courses. Although our results are consistent with previous reports (de Lima Medeiros et al, 2022; Kujan et al, 2013; Kujan et al, 2014), they may highlight the necessity of familiarizing students more with normal mucosal variations and OPMDs by implementing more clinical load in the oral medicine curriculum.…”

“…The overall accuracy of differentially diagnosing oral mucosal lesions among the participants was around 66%. This finding is comparable with previous studies that assessed didactic knowledge among dental care professionals in Brazil (de Lima Medeiros et al, 2022), Eastern Europe (Golburean et al, 2021) and the United Kingdom (Greenwood & Lowry, 2001), but is higher than that reported in studies from the United Arab Emirates (Gaballah et al, 2021) and Indonesia (Wimardhani et al, 2021). More importantly, this study showed that years of experience did not influence the ability to correctly diagnose oral mucosal lesions among the practising dental health professionals.…”

“…our results are consistent with previous reports(de Lima Medeiros et al, 2022;Kujan et al, 2013;Kujan et al, 2014), they may highlight the necessity of familiarizing students more with normal mucosal variations and OPMDs by implementing more clinical load in the oral medicine curriculum. Several limitations are potentially associated with this study.…”