Knowledge and awareness of Turkish population about dental treatment during COVID-19-A questionnaire based survey

Introduction: SARS-CoV-2, also known as Coronavirus (COVID-19), is a zoonotic virus, which can spread from animals to humans, such as SARS-CoV and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) virus. The first case was reported on 31 December 2019 by the WHO Country Office in China. Aim: This study aimed to assess the knowledge and apprehension of the Turkish population about dental treatments during SARS-CoV-2. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional questionnaire-based survey was conducted which consisted of 8 self-prepared questions with two parts. A total of 560 participants, participated in this study. Participants was selected randomly and chi-square analysis was used to analyse statistical significance difference in the response between different groups. Results: Most of the participants (80.9%) thought that their level of knowledge about coronavirus (COVID-19) was sufficient. More than half of the participants (57.2%) evaluated themselves in the risk group in the COVID-19 pandemic. A few of the participants (16.4%) had dental problems during pandemic and apart from that while 53.3% of the participants think that it is not risky to have treatment with vibrating tools used in dentistry; 47.6% of the participants do not prefer to go to dentist even if they had an abscess. Conclusion: The majority of the participants thought that they were knowledgeable enough about the risks of dental treatments in the pandemic period. However, the results have shown us that further steps need to be taken to educate people about the risks of dental treatments and the necessary situations that they have to go to the dentist during this period.Istanbul Medipol University, School of dentistr