Knowledge, Attitude and Practice of Dental Practitioners regarding dental radiographs in pregnant women

Abstract

Introduction: The possibility of an x-ray during pregnancy causing harm to your unborn child is inevitable, the dental practitioners need to have enough knowledge, practice and   attitude to deal and guide a pregnant woman during her pregnancy about dental radiographs.

Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 73 dental practitioners. A Self structured, pre-validated questionnaire was distributed among the subjects. Statistical analysis was performed in SPSS software version- 23. Descriptive statistics was performed to present the responses of the study subjects.

Results: The results showed that about 73.69% of dental practitioners are not aware of the ALARA principle and, given the opinion, 52.05% feel that the first semester is best suitable to take dental radiographs in pregnant women. Among the practitioners 63.01% of them say that the dental radiographs are useful to take in pregnant women. There was no significant difference in the awareness of dental x-rays for pregnant women among male and female participants (p>0.05).

CONCLUSION: Dental practitioners have good knowledge, attitude and practice of dental radiographs for pregnant women during treatment. They are not very much aware of the precautions to be taken during dental radiographs in pregnancy. However, the awareness on the precautions to be taken during dental radiographs in pregnancy to be created among dental practitioners.