Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Dental Practitioners towards Screening for Oral Pre-Cancer and Cancer

One of the global health issues is Oral cancer, which has an increased death rate. Awareness of oral cancer screening is important for oral health care professionals for early detection and improving the patients' survival rate. Attitude towards oral cancer awareness and knowledge of oral cancer screening are the key factors that impact oral cancer awareness success.

Materials and Methods: To assess the knowledge, attitude, and practice of dental practitioners and dental students towards screening for oral pre-cancer and cancer. This study included dental practitioners working in various academic institutions and private practitioners in Chennai. Participants were asked to fill in age, gender, designation, and experience. A structured questionnaire consisting of 10 questions, each having four options, was administered to the participants. The data collected was 100 responses analyzed by statistical package for the social science (spss inc., version 16 for, Chicago, IL, USA). Simple descriptive statistics were used to describe the distribution of data collected. T-test and ANOVA were employed to assess the statistically significant difference in the KAP scores between different groups.

Results: The response rate for the present study was 100%. 37% of general dental practitioners reported that they routinely do a thorough oral examination for all the patients,52% agree that they are adequately trained to examine patients for oral pre-cancer and cancer screening,8% of them reported that they never do toluidine blue staining for patients with oral lesion. Majority(57) of them agree that they would recommend biopsy for suspected cases of oral cancer. Only 9% of the participants were aware of the time required for intraoral screening examination. 31% of them were aware of the risk of malignant transformation in a white lesion. 73% of the participants were aware of the occurrence of oral cancer in non - tobacco users was rare. 53% of agree that thorough intraoral examination for oral cancer will reduce oral cancer mortality and morbidity.