Evaluating the Knowledge of General Dentists of Hamadan in Management of Endodontic Emergencies

Introduction and Aims: Treatment of the endodontic emergencies requires efficient knowledge and skills in diagnosis, definitive dental therapy and drugs administration. There are various treatment modalities to treat endodontic flare-ups. Therefore, dentists may prefer a range of the modalities in the practice, based on their opinions. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the knowledge of general dentists of Hamadan in management of endodontic emergencies.   Methodology: A questionnaire was presented to all general dentists of Hamadan. The questionnaire was made up of 6 questions with multiple-choice responses. Furthermore, demographic information, professional activity, and attitude for patient-referral to endodontist were asked by the questionnaire. Data were analyzed by SPSS software and reported as descriptive results. Results: A total of 110 dentists (79 male and 31 female) aged 38.45±7.75 returned the questionnaires. The most practitioners (63.6%) used formocresol  as root canal medicament; the most common procedure for root canal instrumentation was combination technique (40.9%); 65.5% of the respondents prepared root canals 0.5 to 1 mm short of radiographic apex; the most administered analgesic and antibiotic regimen were Ibuprofen (70.9%) and combination of amoxicillin-metronidazole (34.5%) respectively. The first-choice root-canal irrigant was NaCl/H2O (56.4%). Conclusion: This study showed that the majority of general dentists desired to manage patients with endodontic emergencies rather than their referral to endodontists.