dentists’ knowledge and practice about emergency management of dental trauma

Introduction: traumatic dental injuries (tdis) are not uncommon but there is a notableinadequacyregarding dentists’ readiness to manage these injuries. proper immediate management of tdis increases the long-term prognosis of traumatized teeth and depends extremely on dentists’ knowledge. the aim of this study was to evaluate knowledge and self-reported practice of dentists regarding management of tdis. materials and methods: the participants of this cross-sectional study were dentists in annual congress of iranian dental association. a valid and reliable questionnaire consisting demographic information, the working experience regarding tdis, knowledge, and self-reported practice towards emergency management of tdis was distributed among 260 dentists. the data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and linear regression model by spss 24 software. results: 220 dentists participated in the study among them 180 respondents completely fulfilled the questionnaire (completeness rate= 81%). the mean age was 34.6±9.3 years. among the participants, 43.3% were male and 56.7% were female. the most of respondents (37.8%) reported working experience for less than five cases of tdis. average score of knowledge and self-reported practices were 3.94±1.64 (out of 11) and 8.48±1.74 (out of 13), respectively. linear regression model which evaluated the effect of confounding factors showed that female dentists and whom had more experiences on managing tdis cases had higher knowledge score. furthermore, working experience on managing tdis cases led to the increase in self-reported practice score. conclusion: knowledge of dentists in the field of emergency management of tdis is undesirableand it indicates the need for more comprehensive educational efforts.