Knowledge of Iranian Parents of Elementary School Children about Traumatic Dental Injuries and its Management

Statement of the probelm: traumatic dental injuries (tdis) are frequent events during childhood, and emergency management of these injuries has positive outcomes. purpose: the aim of this study was to evaluate the knowledge of parents of schoolaged children towards dental trauma and to identify the effect of demographic variables such as age, gender and education on their responses. materials and method: a total of 300 parents of elementary school children were selected through cluster sampling from july 2012 to january 2013 in yazd, iran. a questionnaire, designed to collect the data on parents’ knowledge, demographic characteristics, previous experiences, and emergency management of dental trauma, was distributed among participants. statistical analysis of data was perfomed by spss software version 11 using ttest and anova. pvalues less than 0.05 were considered significant. results: 296 out of 300 participants returned their questionnaires (mean age 33.8±5). the parents’ knowledge about tdi managemens was inadequate (average score = 7.03). according to ttest and anova statistical tests, there was no significant relationship between knowledge and age (p = 0.155), gender of parents (p = 0.113), gender of children (p = 0.776), occupation (p = 0.112), and the information source (p = 0.160). the relationship between parents’ knowledge and parental educational level was statistically significant (p = 0.010), and lsd test showed that knowledge score of parents with bachelor’s degree or higher educational levels (7.83±4) was significantly more than other parents (not educated (6.97±4) , high school diploma (6.70±4)). conclusion: majority of parents had little knowledge about tdi and emergency management of avulsed permanent teeth in children. therefore, it seems that educational programs are necessary to improve parents’ knowledge.