Epidemiological Factors of Periodontal Disease Among South Indian Adults.

Introduction: Oral conditions exist worldwide, and are related with astounding morbidity. Indian adults' incidence of mild and moderate periodontal conditions was nearly 25%, while about 19% of adults experience severe periodontitis. Objective: The aim of this study was to analyse epidemiological factors of periodontal disease among a south Indian population based on the role of sociodemographic factors, habitual factors and set of oral health knowledge, attitude, and behaviour measures. Methods: A sample of 288 participants above 18 years of age residing in Tamil Nadu, India took part in this cross-sectional study. Based on WHO criteria, periodontal disease was measured in our study. Age, ethnicity, smoking, education, and oral health behavior were found to be the covariates. Ordinal logistic regression analysis using R version 3.6.1 was utilized to study the various factors that influence periodontal disease among south Indian adults. Results: Various demographic factors such as age between 25 and 34 years (AOR = 2.25; 95% CI 1.14-4.55), 35-44 years (AOR = 1.80; 95% CI 0.89-3.64), ≥ 45 years old (AOR = 2.89; 95% CI 1.41-6.01), ethnicity (AOR = 2.71; 95% CI 1.25-5.81), smoking (AOR = 0.38; 95% CI 0.16-0.65), primary level education (AOR = 0.07; 95% CI 0.01-0.50) high school level education (AOR = 0.06; 95% CI 0.01-0.27), university level education (AOR = 0.08; 95% CI 0.01-0.36) and an individual's oral health behavior (AOR = 0.59; 95% CI 0.32-1.08) were found to be related with periodontal disease among the south Indian population. The maximum log likelihood residual deviance value was 645.94 in the final model. Conclusion: Based on our epidemiological findings, sociodemographic, habitual factors and oral health behavior play a vital role in an individual's periodontal status among south Indian adults. An epidemiological model derived from the factors from our study will help to bring better understanding of the disease and to implement various preventive strategies to eliminate the causative factors.

Development and Validation of Oral Health Knowledge, Attitude and Behavior Questionnaire among Indian Adults.

Background and objectives: The Indian population faces numerous challenges to attain better oral hygiene due to a lack of oral health literacy. For the past 10 years, the prevalence of dental-related conditions in India has become a considerable problem in every state of India. A health-education-based oral health promotion strategy will be an ideal choice for the Indian population instead of endorsing conventional oral health promotion. The use of unsuitable tools to measure may lead to misleading and vague findings that might result in a flawed plan for cessation programs and deceitful effectiveness. Therefore, the research aimed to develop and validate an instrument that can assess the oral health knowledge, attitude and behavior (KAB) of adults in India. Materials and Methods: This study was carried among adults in India, who live in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. A questionnaire was fabricated and then validated using content, face, as well as construct. The knowledge domain was validated using item response theory analysis (IRT), whereas exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was used to validate the behavior domain and attitude. Results: Four principal sections, i.e., knowledge, attitude, demography and behavior, were used to fabricate a questionnaire following validation. Following analysis of item response theory on the knowledge domain, all analyzed items in the domain were within the ideal range of difficulty and discrimination. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy was 0.65 for the attitude and 0.66 for the behavior domain. A Bartlett's test of sphericity was conducted and demonstrated that outcomes for both domains were highly significant (p < 0.001). The factor analysis resulted in three factors with a total of eight items in the attitude domain and three factors with a total of seven items in the behavior domain depicting satisfactory factor loading (>0.3). Across the three factors, i.e., knowledge, attitude and behavior, internal consistency reliability was tested using Cronbach's alpha, and the values obtained were 0.67, 0.87, 0.67, and 0.88, respectively. Conclusions: The findings of this study that assessed validity and reliability showed that the developed questionnaire had an acceptable psychometric property for measuring oral health KAB among adults in India.

Risk Perception of SARS-CoV-2 Infection and Implementation of Various Protective Measures by Dentists Across Various Countries.

OBJECTIVE: Healthcare workers in general are at a high risk of potential infections with COVID-19, especially those who work with aerosol generating procedures. Dentists fall in this category, as not only do they operate with aerosol generating procedures but also operate within a face-to-face contact area. METHODS: A structured self-administered questionnaire was developed at Najran University and provided to the participants for data collection. The data collected included information on risk perception and incorporation of measures for protection against COVID-19 to gauge the attitude of dentists during this period. Also, clinical implementation of various protective measures was reviewed. RESULTS: Of the n = 322 dentists that answered the questions, 50% were general dentists and 28.9% were dentists working at specialist clinics, while the remaining 21.1% of dentists were employed in academic institutions. Among the newer additions to the clinic, 36.3% of dentists answered that they had added atomizers to their practices, followed by 26.4% of dentists that had incorporated the use of UV lamps for sterilization. We found that 18.9% dentists were using HEPA filters in their clinics, while 9.9% of dentists were making use of fumigation devices to control the risk of infection. One-way ANOVA was also carried out to demonstrate that there was a statistically significant difference (p = 0.049) between groups of dentists utilizing HEPA filters, UV lamps, atomizers, and fumigation devices to prevent the spread of SARS-CoV2 across their workplaces. CONCLUSION: Dentists are aware of recently updated knowledge about the modes of transmission of COVID-19 and the recommended infection control measures in dental settings. A better understanding of the situation and methods to prevent it will ensure that the dental community is able to provide healthcare services to patients during the pandemic.