The Attitude and Perception of Dental and Medical Interns Toward Dental Smile Enhancing Treatments

Abstract

Background: Perception of beauty is different from one individual to another, and this may influence their desire for aesthetic treatment. There are many studies that compared dentists to the general population’s perception of smile treatments. However, only a few studies were carried out to compare the perception of fresh graduate dentists with a comparable group of another medical medical background. Objective: This study aimed to compare how medical and dental interns perceive dental smiles and how much they ask for dental enhancement treatments. Methods: A cross-sectional study targeting dental and medical interns in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia using an online survey. An online questionnaire was formulated and distributed through social media. Comparisons between groups were made using the Chi-square test with a p-value of significance kept under 0.05. Results: 204 participants responded to the survey, 107 dental and 97 medical interns (52.5%, 47.5%), respectively. When the participants were asked to rate their satisfaction with their smiles, almost 60% of the dental interns rated their smiles 8/10 or more on a scale of (1-10). When they were asked about the cause of the dissatisfaction, their responses were varying. About 84% of dental interns reported having complications of varying sources because of the smile-enhancing treatment, compared to only 50% of the medical interns. Conclusion: Dental and medical interns interacted in the same manner toward smile-enhancing treatments. Dental interns seem to show more satisfaction with their smiles. They also showed more ability to spot and identify the harmful effects of those procedures.