Assessment of the Dental Students and Dental Practitioners Awareness about Bleeding Disorders across Saudi Arabia

Introduction: Bleeding disorders are a group of disorders which results from defective platlets functions or coagulation or both and it can be classified into platlets disorders, blood vessel disorders and coagulation factors disorders. Bleeding disorder patients undergoing dental procedures may need special management before dental procedure.

Aim: To assess the awareness level of the dental students and practitioners in Saudi Arabia about the bleeding disorders.

Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted among 502 dental students and dentists in Saudi Arabia. This was a questionnaire based internet survey consisted of 331 clinical year dental students and 171 dentists. The questionnaire contained 15 questions.

Results: The highest percentage of participants were from the Eastern Province (31.1%). Almost half of the participants were males (51.2%). The dentists represented (34.1%). Around (47.8%) of participants reported that they had encountered bleeding disorder patients before. Almost (50.8%) participants who encountered those patients said that they referred them to a physician for a consent. Six questions were used to assess the knowledge of the participants about the bleeding disorders based on the number of the correct answers. Only (1%) were able to answer all the questions correctly. Most of the participants (93.8%) said that they need to learn more about bleeding disorders.

Conclusion: Majority of the dental students and general practitioners had poor knowledge of the management of bleeding disorder patients.We strongly recommend intensifying dental educational programs and more training is required in management of patients with medical complications.