Abstract
Local anaesthesia (LA) injections are stressful for the dental practitioner and the child patient. Managing and improving the skills of a dentist in giving pain free local anaesthetic injections will benefit both children and dentists. The aim of this study was to assess Albanian dentists attitude and perception about dental injections in children.
Methods: A questionnaire recording the dentist’s attitude about pain-free Local Anaesthetic Techniques in Children was used. It was structured as anonymous with six closed questions using Likert scales. Information about gender, age, region and years of practice collected. It was distributed to a convenience sample of dentists participating in the 20th Annual Dental Conference in Tirana, Albania in November 2014. The information collected was analysed using IBM SPSS 20. Descriptive statistics and one way ANOVA was used in comparing groups. The results were evaluated within a 95% confidence interval. Statistical significance level was set at p<0.05. Consent was assumed if the dentist agreed to take part.
Results: 86(42.4%) of respondents were male and 117(57.6%) were female. The mean age was 35 years (sd 10.1) and the mean clinical practice experience was 10 years (sd 9.5). In total 72(35.5%) of dentists believed that pain is inevitable during local anaesthesia in children and 158(77.8%) agreed that a cotton pellet should be applied with a topical anaesthetic. 128 (63%) of dentists believed in the possibility of pain-free local anaesthesia in children. There was a higher agreement in males but it did not reach statistical significance. There was a statistically significant higher agreement between dentists in Tirana (the Albanian capital) p<0.03 compared with the other regions. Experience (p<0.2) and age (p<0.9) were not significant.
Conclusions: A majority of Albanian dentists report the importance of painfree dental injections in children.
Especially dentists in the capital agree on the need for painfree LA injections.
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