Attitude of Dental Students and Dentists towards Drug Addicted Patients

Objective: To study and compare the attitudes of dental medicine students and practicing dentists towards the treatment of drug addicted patients in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Methods: The research is a part of the project “Oral Health of Drug Addicted Patients”, funded by a grant from the Medical University-Plovdiv. Data has been collected by an anonymous survey, specifically designed for the study. Questionnaires have been completed by a random sample of students from the Faculty of Dental Medicine in Plovdiv and dentists, practicing on the territory of the town of Plovdiv. Statistical analyses include descriptive statistics and non-parametric tests, performed by SPSS 13.0 software. Results: 162 dental medicine students and 172 dentists are inquired. The mean age of the students is 22.6±1.8 years and 43.3±10.7 for the dentists (p<0.001). Students are more self-confident of identifying a drug addicted patient (48.7%) than dentists (32.2%) (p<0.001). Predominant part of the dentists answer that the most frequent infectious disease is Hepatitis B while 50.3% of the students think it is AIDS (p<0.001). Both, students (95.1%) and dentists (71.9%) expect higher prevalence of caries in drug addicted patients (p<0.001). Almost a quarter of the students want to be further educated about the problem during their undergraduate learning. Dentists prefer to receive such information in post graduate training programs (15.3%), through internet (14.0%) or by printed dental magazines (13.6%). Most of the students (69.4%) and dentists (73.1%) answer that drug addicted patients should be treated in specialized dental practices (p>0.05). Conclusion: The inquired dental medicine students and practitioners show inadequate competence about the specific problems of drug addicted patients. There is a need of additional courses on that subject during the undergraduate and post graduate education in dental medicine. Drug addicted persons should receive an optimal dental treatment by well trained dental specialists.