Knowledge, Awareness, and Attitude Regarding Dental Implants among Dental Interns

Implant therapy is an elective dental procedure of dental rehabilitative treatment. Objective of this study was to assess the knowledge, awareness, and attitude of dental interns of Nepal toward dental implants and to see associations of the responses with gender and geographic location of dental college.

It was conducted from June 2016 to June 2017 after taking ethical clearance and approval from the research committee. The sample included the interns who were present at the time of the survey. Data collection was done through a cross-sectional questionnaire survey, during clinical postings of the interns at all the dental colleges of Nepal, supervised and monitored by the investigators themselves; coded and entered in Microsoft Excel 2013 and statistical analysis was done by SPSS 20 version.

A majority of the interns said they are moderately well informed about dental implants 141 (50.36%); main advantage of dental implants is they are conservative 164 (58.6%); most important factor for implant success is case selection 143 (51.07%); the longevity of dental implants is 10-20yrs, 162 (57.85%), 188 (67.14%) agreed that they were not provided with sufficient information and 191 (68.21%) stated that they need more information; 180 (64.3%) felt the difficulty encountered while placing implants is average and 229 (81.78%) stated that they need more hygiene care than natural teeth. There were major differences in the mindset to some other questions. Significant associations were seen with the location of college for some responses.

A majority of interns have knowledge regarding dental implants, but the percentage of those who gave unsatisfactory answers is also large. They have a positive attitude towards gaining more information through various means.