Influence of academic year on dental student's knowledge about syphilis and its oral manifestations

This study aimed to investigate the influence of the year in the course on dental students' knowledge about syphilis and its oral manifestations. A cross-sectional study was conducted with dental students at the Federal University of Espírito Santo, Brazil, who were divided into two groups: earlier years of the Dentistry program (second and third years) and later years (fourth and fifth years). Data were collected using a questionnaire with 16 questions addressing knowledge of the main characteristics of syphilis. The Chi-square test (or Fisher's exact test with Yates correction) was used to assess the association between variables, with a significance level of 5%. The prevalence ratio (PR) and the 95% confidence interval (95% CI) were used as measures of effect size. Overall, 171 students were invited, and 169 participated in the study. Only 40 (23.7%) students answered correctly about the stages of the disease. Nearly all participants answered that syphilis presents oral manifestations; however, only 44 (26%) answered the question correctly. Regarding differential diagnoses, only 63 (37.3%) reported knowledge of the subject. The direction of the bivariate analysis was inverse to the year of study, indicating a possible association between students enrolled in the early years of the Dentistry program and better knowledge about etiologic agents (p < 0.001), clinical manifestations (p < 0.001), disease stages (p < 0.001), oral manifestations (p < 0.001), differential diagnosis (p = 0.019), and drugs (p = 0.001) related to the disease compared with students enrolled in the later years.