Knowledge, Attitude and Perception of Dentists towards Special Care Dentistry in Chennai, India

Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate the Knowledge, attitude and perception of dentists towards special care dentistry. The objective was to evaluate the awareness of special care dentistry and its needs among dentists who were based in Chennai and also to determine the association between age range and willingness to participate in future special care training. Method: The study was designed as an online closed ended questionnaire based study and the dentists (n=101) were contacted via email. The data collected was computerized and analysed statistically using IBM SPSS software. Results: The frequency of the obtained data was depicted for understanding the knowledge, attitude and perception of dentists towards Special Care Dentistry (SCD). Chi-Square test was used for statistical analyses to determine the association between age range (20-30, 31-40, 41-50, and 51-60) and willingness to participate in future special care training courses. The result was statistically significant with chi-square value of 12.234 at p-value 0.007 (p<0.05). The association between age range and category of patients difficult to treat was not statistically significant at p-value 0.98. The association between gender and category of patients difficult to treat was not statistically significant at p-value 0.548. The association between dentist qualification and referral to special care specialists was not statistically significant at p-value 0.318. Conclusion: This study highlights the shortcomings in our dental curriculum as not all dentists had been mandatorily trained in delivering oral health care for special care patients.