Evaluation of Knowledge and Practice of General Dentists in Yazd City about Infection Control during Preparation of Intraoral Radiographs

Introduction: Patients, oral health care staff anddentists are exposed to infections and infectious microorganisms during dental imaging. The aim of this study was to evaluate the knowledge and practice of general dentists in Yazd City about infection control during the preparation of intraoral radiographs. Methods: This analytical cross-sectional study, examined the knowledge and practice of 81 active dentists in Yazd City who were selected based on convenience sampling method through a questionnaire. To analyze the data, SPSS 16 ,and Pearson's correlation coefficient as well as One-way ANOVA were used. Results: The mean age of the participants was 36.45 ± 9.66 and their mean work experience was 10.03±8.28 years. The mean score of knowledge about infection control during intraoral radiographs was more than 50% and it was evaluated as moderate. There was no statistically significant difference between the mean score of dentists' knowledge in terms of gender (P=0.623), age (P=0.849), work experience (P=0.824) and the year of their graduation (P=0.860), but there was a statistically significant difference between the mean score of dentists' knowledge according to their university of study (P=0.015), so that Yazd School of Dentistry graduates had significantly less knowledge than graduates of other faculties. Conclusion: Considering the importance of infection control in dental radiology and the mean score of dentists' knowledge in the present study, which was moderate, therefore, the need to improve dentists' awareness in this field is emphasized