Journal of Dental Medicine

  Background and Aims: According to the concerns that people are not familiar with the word surgeon - a dentist that all general dentists use this word (surgeon - a dentist) in their office boards and given to the people expectations of this word, teaching these surgeries in the dental curriculum is limited. There is a lack of information about the public awareness of this term. As a result, the aim of this study was to determine the people awareness about the meaning of the word ‘surgeon’ on the dental offices board and its related factors in Tehran, in 2010-11.

  Materials and Methods: This study was conducted on 385 individuals by the descriptive - cross sectioned method in Tehran. Their awareness was defined and the role of relevant factors like individual characteristics, age, gender, socioeconomic (education, job, visit the dentist) were studied. Data were analyzed using K2-test.

  Results: 57.4% were female and 42.6% were male. Their average age was 50 years. The minimum and maximum age was 20 and 77, respectively. 43.6% of them had academic education and 56.4% had a diploma or less. 4.9% of them had well knowledge, 30.1% had average and 65% had poor awareness. In other words, 35% had acceptable awareness and 65% had unacceptable.

  Conclusion: It seems that people unawareness of the word surgeon - a dentist is a serious concern. Because this lack of knowledge has led to referring the people to non-expert dentist for the surgery, that may causes serious problems.