What general medicine students of University of Rijeka know about dental avulsion?

Injuries of decidouos and premanent teeth can be rather hard, esspecially in combinatin if they involve adjacent supportive tissue. Among all injuries, the loss of the teeth is considered the most stressful for both a child and its parents. Tooth injury usually involves soft tissue damage, which means severe bleeding. As parents often look for help from their family general practitioners, it is very important that general practitioner is acquainted with the first aid in order to preserve the tooth and enable further skeletal development.

This study was carried out in the form of a questionnaire, which was distributed among general medical students at the Medical studies of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Rijeka, Croatia. The study included 86 pre-doctoral students of the 3rd, 4th and 5th years of studies. The questionnaire consisted of 23 questions, which were related to demographics, personal experience in treating dental injuries, theoretical knowledge about dental injuries and their interest in additional training on the subject.

The results showed that only 32.6% of the students heard of 'tooth avulsion'. Replacement of the avulsed tooth in its original position in the jaw was considered by 77.6% of the students. In their entire education, 84.9% students didn't acquire any knowledge about dental injuries.

The study showed that medical students have very poor knowledge about dental injuries. Also, the vast majority of the students were neither informed nor educated about it during their studies.