Knowledge and Behavior of General Dental Practitioners about hepatitis B virus in Qazvin city

Hepatitis B is a major public health problem globally affecting two billion people. Assessing knowledge and increasing awareness about HBV are part of the main actions against hepatitis B. This research was intended to assess the knowledge and awareness regarding hepatitis B among dentists.

This cross-sectional, descriptive, questionnaire-based study was conducted among 105 general dentists in Qazvin using a structured questionnaire containing two sections. In the first section, recorded data was about age, gender, and the number of years that the participant was graduated. The second section contained 22 questions of which 18 questions assessed the knowledge of dentists about HBV. Their knowledge was scored from 1 to 18 and then categorized as good, moderate, and poor. Data obtained from research questionnaires were analyzed by SPSS software version 21 using Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests. Values of p < 0.05 were considered statistically significant.

Effect of gender, age, and number of years that the participants were graduated, were not significant on the awareness of participants. (P=0.928 and P=0.822, P=0.938, respectively) The mean of their knowledge was 6.37±2.44.  77.1% (54) of participants had poor knowledge and 18.6% (13) of participants had moderate knowledge. Only 4.3% (3) of participants had good knowledge about HBV

Overall knowledge of dentists about HBV was poor in the current study.It is essential to improve the knowledge of dentists about HBV and Hepatitis B.