A Study Based on Dental Awareness, Knowledge and Attitudes among the Medical Practitioners in and Around Kanpur City (India)

The mouth is a mirror of health or disease, a sentinel or early warning system. As the gateway to the body, a constant barrage of invaders like bacteria, viruses, parasites, and fungi, challenges the mouth. Many systemic diseases have oral manifestations. These lesions develop on the oral mucosa, tongue, gingiva,dentition, periodontium, salivary glands, facial skeleton, extraoral skin and other related structures .Thus oral cavity is an important diagnostic area not just because it contains derivatives of all of the primary germinal layers, and includes tissues not demonstrable anywhere else in the body, but also because of its role played in diagnosing a number of systemic diseases just because of their oral manifestations.

In the event that the integrity of the oral tissues is compromised, the mouth can become a source of disease or pathological processes affecting other parts of the body. It can also become a source of contagion by means of contaminated fluids or materials passed to others.Dental knowledge of qualified medical practitioners is different when compared to the general public. Even though they are qualified in the medical faculty their knowledge about dental diseases, relationship of oral health with systemic diseases and life threatening dental diseases are scarce. Read more........