Awareness to Orthodontics among a Sample of Final Year Dental Students

Abstract

Abstract Objective Because of esthetic demand, awareness about orthodontic treatment has increased nowadays, especially among young people and adolescents, in addition to the fact that knowledge of orthodontics and various details of it is more significant among dental students according to what they learned in their curricula and their examination and observation of many cases of malocclusion. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the awareness of the final year of undergraduate dental students toward orthodontics. Materials and Methods About 532 (320 females and 212 males) students in the fifth year of six Iraqi universities were invited to participate in this questionnaire distributed via the Google classroom. This questionnaire included 20 questions about orthodontics. Pearson's chi-square test evaluated the gender and universities differences. Results In general, the awareness responses were very high in most of the questions answered except in three questions in which the percentage of positive answers varies from 49 to 76%. Also, there were no significant gender differences in 17 question answers, and only 3 showed significant gender differences. Females expressed a high level of awareness than males. Conclusion The high and close level of awareness expressed by students' responses in this study revealed the integrated education in orthodontic sciences in Iraqi dental colleges in different universities, except in some questions that deal with topics about the acceleration of tooth movement and the relation between vitamin D3 and teeth movement.