A Survey on General Physician's Knowledge and Behavior Towards the Relationship Between Periodontal Diseases and Systemic Health

Periodontal diseases and their important contribution to our overall health has been a field of study in the recent years. This study aimed at investigating the knowledge of general practitioners about the relationship between periodontal diseases and systemic diseases.
In this study, 168 general physicians practicing in Zahedan, Iran, were randomly selected. A self-designed questionnaire was used. Respondents’ demographic characteristics, periodontal disease knowledge, knowledge of associations between periodontal disease and systemic illnesses, and attitudes toward patients’ periodontal health and the amount of patients referrals were collected. SPSS version 19 was used to assess the association of knowledge about periodontal disease with gender, age, and work experience (p ≤ 0.05).
The average knowledge score of all participants was 17.8±4.8. The correlation coefficient between knowledge and age was 0.264, and it was 0.158 between knowledge and experience, which had no correlation with one another. Moreover, there was no significant correlation between knowledge and sex (P > 0.05%). The least amount of knowledge and referral was of the link between periodontitis and cardiovascular diseases. Participants reported university courses as the major source of knowledge.
The results of this study revealed a moderate level of knowledge of general practitioners about the relationship between periodontal diseases and systemic disease. With the rapidly growing field of periodontal medicine, oral health related training should be an integral part of continuing education courses after graduation to increase collaboration between medical and dental health care professionals to provide better health care services.