Dental Students and General Practitioners’ Knowledge about Oral Mucosal Variations: A Survey-Based Analysis

Abstract

Background: Dentists have the capability to improve our population's oral and general health by early detection, appropriate management, and referral of oral mucosal variations because many systemic disorders have oral symptoms, many of which appear before their systemic counterparts. This paper is dedicated to assess the knowledge of Iraqi general practitioners and senior dental students about common oral mucosal variations. This cross-sectional study included (71) general dentists graduated from Iraqi dental schools and (279) senior dental students. A questionnaire form was created with slides showing various oral conditions with questions on each slide to gauge the respondent's awareness of the diagnosis. For data analyzing Microsoft Excel and Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 26 were used. Results showed that the number of correct diagnoses of pathological and non-pathological oral conditions ranged from (18.3%-98.6%) and (15.5%-98.5%) for dental students and general dentists, respectively, and the most frequently diagnosed lesion was oral squamous cell carcinoma (97.7%) while lingual thyroid was the most frequently incorrectly diagnosed (18%). In conclusions more training for Iraqi general practitioners and senior dental students is needed to provide better oral health care.