ISSN: 2456-8090 (online)

DOI: 10.26440/IHRJ/0701.04603

 

Knowledge, Attitude and Risks Associated in Treatment among Dental Practitioners of Ghaziabad Regarding COVID-19 Pandemic

 

RAFIA*1, RAMAN GUPTA2, ASHISH SINGLA3

 

Cite this article as: Rafia, Gupta R, Singla A. Knowledge, Attitude and Risks Associated in Treatment among Dental Practitioners of Ghaziabad Regarding COVID-19 Pandemic. Int Healthc Res J. 2023;7(1):OR1-OR4. https://doi.org/10.26440/IHRJ/0701.04597

Author Affiliations:

1. P.G. Student, Department of Public Health Dentistry

2. P.G. Student, Department of Pedodontics and Preventive Dentistry

3. Professor and Head, Department of Public Health Dentistry

D.J. College of Dental Sciences and Research, Modinagar

 

Contact Corresponding Author at: khursheedrafia21[at]gmail[dot]com

 

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: COVID 19 was first reported in Wuhan China, in December 2019 and it soon spread to the entire globe involving millions of people. It was declared as a global pandemic on 11th March 2020 by WHO. The symptoms ranged from mild to deadly and often included fever, cough, breathing difficulty, loss of taste, loss of smell. Severe cases resulted in pneumonia, dyspnea, shock, multi-organ failure and death. Transmission is chiefly through droplets thus pose a significant risk among dental professionals.

AIM: to assess the knowledge about Covid-19 among dental practitioners in Ghaziabad and the preventive measures used for the treatment of the patients.

MATERIALS AND METHOD: An online survey was carried out among the dental practitioners of Ghaziabad from November 2020 to January 2021.  A snowball sample of 250 dentists was selected and a predesigned questionnaire was mailed to them. Response was recorded via a second email sent by them.

RESULTS: The study showed that majority of dentists 95% had good knowledge about Covid  and the primary source of information was World Health Organization through television, radio and social media. About 85% were fearful of the being infected by suspected patients, and transmitting the disease to their homes and 61% were afraid of the impact it will have on dentists livelihood. It was witnessed that dentists having more than 10 years experience had a positive attitude towards the virus. Infection control protocols seemed insufficient and needed improvement and assistance.

CONCLUSION: the study concluded that though the knowledge was good, the practice scores were poor. Our findings have important implications in need for a special training program for dentists to deal which such pandemics. 

KEYWORDS: Covid-19, Dentists, Ghaziabad, Knowledge, Practice.

 

INTRODUCTION

The virus causing COVID-19 is a severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)- like coronavirus that had previously been reported in bats in China. The virus is zoonotic that has a tendency to be transmitted between animals to humans and humans to humans.1 COVID-19 caused a global pneumonia outbreak and has become a major challenge to public health in almost all countries of the world. It  and was declared as a pandemic on March 11, 2020, by the World Health Organization (WHO). 

The spread of the newly emerged coronavirus has created  panic and chaos worldwide and changed the landscape of the health sector.2 As of July 2, 2020, a total of 10,357,662 cases of COVID-19 have been reported throughout, with approximately 4.91% of the mortality rate.3,4 COVID-19 is likely to cause severe acute respiratory infection amongst infected people, which is usually transmitted from person to person through hands, saliva, nasal drops, and superficial contact.5 This viral infection involves several systems such as respiratory, enteric, hepatic, neurologic, and vascular systems.6,7 Dentists are at the highest risk of getting infected,  as droplets are the primary source of transmission of the disease and dental clinical settings could act as a possible place for the transmission of the virus when an infected person (symptomatic or asymptomatic) gets dental treatment. Evidence shows that SARS-CoV-2 has been detected in saliva samples, and thus saliva can act as a potential source of transmission.8,9,10 

The aim of this study was to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice regarding coronavirus among dental practitioners and determine the preventive strategies in use. 

MATERIALS AND METHODS:

An online survey was carried out among the dental practioners of Ghaziabad from November 2020 to January 2021. Ethical approval was taken from the ethical clearance committee of D.J college. A snowball sample of 250 dentists was selected and a predesigned questionnaire was mailed to them. Response was recorded via a second email sent by them. Approval was taken from the ethical review committee of D.J college. The questions addressed the attitude, knowledge and practice of dentists about coronavirus. 

RESULTS

The response rate was 97%, the data collected collected and analyzed. Data was entered into SPSS version 21. The knowledge was measured using a six questions and dichotamized into good and poor knowledge based of a 60% cut off  of the domain. The study showed that majority of dentists 95% had good knowledge about Covid  and the primary source of information was World Health Organization through television, radio and social media. About 85% were fearful of the being infected by suspected patients, and transmitting the disease to their homes and 61% were afraid of the impact it will have on dentists livelihood. It was witnessed that dentists having more than 10 years experience had a positive attitude towards the virus. Infection control protocols seemed insufficient and needed improvement and asssistance (table 1). The questions used in the questionnaire are shown in table 2.

 

Alternate link to tables/figures (Copy/Paste link in anew browser window): https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LUTbpNZn0iJ0X0Gy2nWSfxacrk3u3lvI/view?usp=sharing

DISCUSSION

The findings of the current survey demonstrated that the majority of dentists had good knowledge (95%). Our result is consistent with a multinational study (92.7%) conducted by Kamate et al.11 and anotherstudy conducted by Saqlain et al.[12] in Pakistan (93.2%).We also found that 75.57% of dentists used official government websites such as the World Health Organization as the main source of information about COVID-19. The majority of the dentists participating in this study were male (60%), which is in accordance with a study conducted by Almulhim et al.13 and Mustafa et al.14 The virus remains asympotomatic for sometime, but contiues to be infectious and the disease can spread before any symptoms are detected. Therefore, it is recommended to increase the level of awareness in preventive measures in order to control its spread. All of the prevention measures—ranging from social distancing, hand washing to protective equipment, including surgical masks, face shields, gowns, and gloves—are important as protection measures for dental professionals in triage areas. In line with the results of previous studies, infection with COVID-19 through patients or colleagues, treatment of suspected patients, nonobservance of social distance with patients, the possibility of transmitting the infection to family members, post-infection quarantine, and treatment costs due to COVID-19, as well as news related to mortality were the main causes of dentist’s fear and anxiety in this study. 

CONCLUSION

In general, dentists of Ghaziabad who were involved in the current survey showed satisfactory knowledge and a positive attitude toward COVID‑19 during the outbreak. However, there is stillscope for recommendations to improve the knowledge level among dental staff. In addition, it is recommended to increase the dentists access to materials provided by dental health‑care authorities and to specify the best and safest approaches while dealing with COVID‑19 patients during and after the outbreak. 

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© Rafia et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License CC-BY-NC 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the use is not commercial and the original author(s) and source are cited.

Submitted on: 05-Apr-2023;  Accepted on: 29-Apr-2023