Assessing the dental caries status and knowledge, attitude, practice of dental care of the 1st and the 5th year military medical students; proposing methods to improve knowledge, attitude and practice of dental care of military medical students. Subjects and methods: Cross-sectional study was carried out on 380 students of Military Medical University (185 of the 1st year students, 195 of the 5th year students) from October 2018 to May 2019. Results and conclusion: The prevalence of dental caries in Military Medical University students was quite low: 28.6% in the 1st year students and 23.1% in the 5th year students. The general DMF index was 1.005. Distribution of living area was mainly in the countryside (51.32%). The general knowledge of good dental care was 4.9% (1st year student); 74.4% (5th year student). The attitude of good dental care was 68.1% (1st year student); 89.8% (5th year student). The practice of dental care was still bad: 75.1% (1st year student); 72.3% (5th year student).
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ASSESSMENT OF DENTAL CARIES STATUS AND METHODS
TO IMPROVE KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE, PRACTICE OF DENTAL
CARE IN MILITARY MEDICAL UNIVERSITY
Dinh Viet Thang 1 ; Nguyen Khang 1 ; Nguyen Phuong Lien 1
SUMMARY
Objectives: Assessing the dental caries status and knowledge, attitude, practice of dental care of the 1 st and the 5 th year military medical students; proposing methods to improve knowledge, attitude and practice of dental care of military medical students Subjects and methods: Cross-sectional study was carried out on 380 students of Military Medical University (185 of the 1 st year students, 195 of the 5 th year students) from October 2018 to May 2019 Results and conclusion: The prevalence of dental caries in Military Medical University students
DMF index was 1.005 Distribution of living area was mainly in the countryside (51.32%) The general knowledge of good dental care was 4.9% (1 st year student); 74.4% (5 th year student) The attitude of good dental care was 68.1% (1 st year student); 89.8% (5 th year student) The practice of dental care was still bad: 75.1% (1 st year student); 72.3% (5 th year student)
* Keywords: Dental caries; DMF index; Dental care
INTRODUCTION
Dental caries is the most common
disease in oral diseases In recent years,
although the incidence of dental caries
has been improved significantly in developed
and developing countries, including Vietnam
thanks to scientific advances in prevention
and implementation of national dental
school programs However, dental caries
still accounts for a high proportion,
especially in students
Military Medical University (MMU) is
the leading medical human resources
training institution for the military For
odonto-stomatology department, students
of MMU are only equipped with
10 theoretical lessons and 02 weeks of clinical practice So far, there has not been any studies to understand the dental caries status as well as knowledge, attitude and practice of dental care, to propose methods to improve dental care
in these subjects Therefore, we conducted this research with aims:
- Assessing the status of dental caries
MMU
- Assessing the status of knowledge, attitude, practice of dental care of the 1 st
- Proposing methods to prevent dental caries for MMU students
1 103 Military Hospital
Corresponding author: Dinh Viet Thang (bsdinhthang277@gmail.com)
Date received: 10/06/2019
Date accepted: 23/08/2019
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SUBJECTS AND METHODS
1 Subjects
380 students of MMU (185 of the
1st year students and 195 of the 5th year
students)
The study period was from October
2018 to May 2019 at Department of
Odonto-stomatology and the lecture hall
of MMU
2 Methods
- Cross-sectional study
- Steps to conduct this research:
+ Examining and collecting informations:
Name, age and gender
+ Clinical examination combined with
questionnaires on knowledge, attitude,
practice of dental care in students
* Data processing: By software SPSS
version 22.0
* Group of variables on the knowledge,
attitude and practice of dental care of two
groups:
- Knowledge: About causes of dental
caries; time to brush teeth, how to brush
teeth; effects of dental floss; period of regular dental check-up
- Attitude: About the dangers of dental caries; examination when there is dental disease; regular brushing; diet which lots glucose; periodically removing tartar
- Practice: About brushing teeth (ways
to brush teeth, brushing frequency, time, time of brushing, how to brush teeth, time
of replacing new toothbrush); using dental floss; using toothpicks; diet which lots
of glucose; regular dental check-up; management when there are dental problems
To assess the level of knowledge, attitude and practice of dental care of two groups, we set the standard that divided into 3 levels:
- If the answer is correct ≥ 80% of the points in each section: Good
- If the answer is 60 - 80% of the points
in each section: Average
- If the answer is < 60% of the points in each section: Bad
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Total The 1 st year students The 5 th year students Characteristics
Gender
Ethenic
Area
living
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Parents’
job
Our research subject was military students, due to the specificity of them, male accounted for the majority (84.47% male and 15.53% female) Most of the students are Kinh people (96.84%), this result was similar to the study by Le Nguyen Ba Thu (2012) [3] (99.5%), the rate of students whose parents doing business and farming occupied a higher proportion than other groups (26.32%) Living areas are mainly in the countryside (51.32%) This situation may be affect the conditions and habits of dental care
Table 2: Distribution of prevalence of tooth caries by gender
p
General
< 0.05
< 0.05
< 0.05
The rate of dental caries was 28.6% in the 1st year and 23.1% in the 5th year This result was lower than other studies Trinh Dinh Hai [1] (2005) studied 3,181 Vietnamese adults, the rate of dental caries was 87.5% Truong Manh Dung [2] (2005) studied in the ages of 18 - 45, the rate of dental caries was 68.6% This result was due
to the fact that our study subjects are medical students who have good knowledge of dental care than others
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Table 3: Distribution of DMF index
< 0.05
Our result was lower than other studies According to Truong Manh Dung [1] (2005),
the DMF index was 2.84; F Maatouk's study [4] on medical students with an average
age of 22.7 showed that the DMF index was 2.32 This result showed that the dental
care, treatment and preservation of tooth decay of MMU students were quite good
the 5th year students
Students
Level
p
< 0.05
The proportion of students in the 5th year was higher than the 1st year at a good level
(74.4% compared to 4.9%), the rate of the 1st year students was higher than 5th year
students at the bad level (55.7% compared to 3.1%) This difference was statistically
significant with p < 0.05 This showed the effectiveness of the teaching knowledge of
dental care for students when they studied odonto-stomatology in the 5th year This
result was similar to the study by R Neeraja [5] on 250 dental students in Bangalore,
India: The 3rd year students with good knowledge of dental care were better than the
first and the second year students, differences were statistically significant with p < 0.001
5th year students
Students
Level
< 0.05
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The proportion of students with good and average attitude of dental care in the
5th year was higher than in the 1st year (98.5% and 97.8%) This result was similar to
the study by Le Nguyen Ba Thu [3] (2012) Thus, it can be seen clearly effectiveness
before and after studying odonto-stomatology of two groups
Table 6: Comparison of the level of practice of dental care of the 1st year and the
5th year students
Students
Level
p
> 0.05
The results showed that > 70% of students who practices dental care at a bad level,
but this difference was not statistically significant with p > 0.05 This result was similar
to study by Le Nguyen Ba Thu [3] (2012)
CONCLUSION
* Dental caries status of subjects:
- The proportion of dental caries was
quite low: 28.6% in the 1st year; 23.1% in
the 5th year, mainly in countryside and the
students’ parents are farmer, business
- The DMF index was generally low
(1.002) The DMF index of students in the
1st year was higher than in the 5th year
(1.166 and 0.845)
- The proportion of dental caries had
not been treated in the 1st year students
higher than the 5th year students (48.6%
and 38.81%)
* Status of knowledge, attitude and
practice of dental care of subjects:
- Knowledge: General knowledge about
dental caries of both research groups at
good level was 4.9% in the 1st year students; 74.4% in the 5th year students
- Attitude: The proportion of students with good dental care attitude was 68.1%
in the 1st year and 89.8% in the 5th year
- Practice: Both groups of students had
a high rate of badly practical skills (75.1%
in the first year; 72.3% in the 5th year)
* Some methods to improve knowledge, attitude and practice of dental care in MMU students:
Through the above research results,
we offer some methods to improve knowledge, attitude, practice of dental care in MMU students:
- The MMU should organize examination, care, dental consultation, tartar scaling for students every 6 months
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- The MMU should add to the learning
program content and practice of dental
care
- The MMU should invest in building
skill labs for students to practice dental
care skills before going to practice in
hospitals
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