Abstract

Background: Oral health is an essential part of general health. Many studies have mentioned the usage of oral health services to be often symptoms-oriented, despite the availability of oral health specializations to serve different oral health problems. A common person usually cannot differentiate between other dental specialties. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the level of knowledge and awareness about different dental specialties among the population of Madinah, Saudi Arabia.
Methodology: In this cross-sectional study, 344 participants were randomly enrolled, among them 63.4% were female, and 36.6% were male. A pre-tested questionnaire was used in the data collection. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences was used to analyze the collected data.
Results: The findings of this study indicated that 63.1% of the participants do not go to the dental clinic periodically for checkups, while the majority of visits reported were every 6 months (10.2%). The mean score for the knowledge and awareness regarding different dental specialties was 4.4 ± 2.0. Overall, the percentage of the participants who had a good level of knowledge was 3.5%; 44.5% had an average level of knowledge; and
52% had a poor level of knowledge. We found that there was an association between age group and level of knowledge (p = 0.048). We did not find any association between the level of knowledge and the following factors: gender (p = 0.054) and level of education (p = 0.113).
Conclusion: This study revealed a knowledge gap that exists about dentistry specialties. An eye-catching outcome reported in this study was poor adherence to periodic dental visits observed even among health workers.

Key words: Knowledge, awareness, dental specialties, Madinah, Saudi Arabia