Current knowledge, attitude and practice among dental hygienists in oral cancer awareness: Systematic review

Evidence on the awareness and knowledge level of oral cancer and its associated risk factors among dental hygienists is scarce; this systematic review aimed to synthesize their available evidence of the level of knowledge, attitude and practice.

PubMed and Scopus were searched for publications from any year up to January 2021. Studies about knowledge and/or attitudes and/or practices of dental hygienists have been taken into account. Overall, 14 studies have been selected for the systematic review.

Excluding tobacco use (99.8%-100%), considerable variability were found among dental hygienists about important oral cancer risk factors such as alcohol consumption (30.0%-90.0%), human papilloma virus (23.0%-90.0%), oldness (37.7%-69.3%), diet (30.0%-42.2%) and betel quid chewing (5.0% and 98.0%). There was a good level of awareness among dental hygienists regarding leukoplakia (86.5%), instead less than half recognized erythroplakia as a precancerous lesion. Moderate knowledge was recorded about frequent sites of oral cancer development. Most of dental hygienists reported to perform intraoral screening (85.2%-100%). To regard attitude, a great variability was found about adequacy of undergraduate training (15.7%-75.0%) and most of dental hygienists expressed the need for continuing education (92.7%-99.0%).

Dental hygienists play a key role in oral cancer detection. Low knowledge of oral cancer among dental hygienists is strongly associated with the low levels of early detection. These findings provide useful information to improve continuing education programmes pre- and post-graduation targeted at the prevention of oral cancer in order to reduce oral cancer morbidity and mortality.