Portuguese Dentists' Attitudes Towards Their Role in Addressing Obesity

To determine Portuguese dentists' role in addressing obesity.

For this pilot study, the original version of the Dentists' Role In Addressing Obesity questionnaire was translated from English into Portuguese and validated to ensure that it was culturally adapted for Portuguese dentists. The questionnaire was distributed to a random sample of 400 Portuguese dentists. SPSS Statistics 20 was used to analyse the survey sampling design and assess respondents' attitudes and opinions, outcome expectations and self-efficacy both as ordinal and dichotomised variables. The analysis was a descriptive statistic based on frequencies, without symmetry test.

In all, 141 dentists responded. Overall, 22.0% of respondents offered a form of counseling services and 58.9% reported that they were interested in offering obesity-related services. A paucity of trained personnel (58.9%) was cited by the respondents as a major barrier, followed by patients' rejection of weight-loss advice (32.6%) and fears of offending patients (29.1%). 92% of respondents agreed that dentists would be more willing to intervene if obesity were linked to oral disease.

Healthcare providers must coordinate prevention and interventional efforts for maximum effect. Given the positioning of dentists willing to assist in such an effort, it appears reasonable for experts in obesity intervention in conjunction with dental educators to develop intervention models to be implemented within the scope of the dental practice.