ABSTRACT
Aim and Background: Having knowledge about dental pulp tissue and its treatment along with the patient's attitudes toward the mentioned treatments are of high importance, not only for the practitioner but also for the patient
Methods and Materials: the present research is a cross - sectional and descriptive study, conducted in Gilan dental faculty, from March of June 2003. A questionnaire was completed by the patients about the demographic information and their knowledge and attitude son root canal therapies. All the questions were confirmed by endodontics professors consisting of 15 questions on the level of knowledge and 6 remaining ones on the patients' attitudes. After the experimental stage, the sample size, at 95% confidence coefficient, was determined as 111. The data were analyzed by SPSS software and regression test
Results: the results showed that 8.1% of the patients had a very weak knowledge, 27.9% had a weak knowledge where as the knowledge of the 45%, 16.2% and 2.7% of the patients were average, good and excellent, respectively. Considering attitude, 69.496, 28.8% and 1.8% of the patients showed positive, negative and indifferent attitudes, respectively
Conclusion: it is suggested that, prior to the initiation of the treatment, a pamphlet on the basic information about root canal therapy should be provided for each patient