Identifying The Level Of Awareness Of Psmchs Female Students And Employees About Dental Amalgam Fillings

Abstract

An amalgam filling is a dental material used to fill a tooth cavity after removing caries. Dental amalgam fillings are also known as “silver fillings” because of their silver present. The aim of this study is to identify the level of awareness of PSMCHS female students and employees about dental amalgam fillings.

Materials and methods: The study included a total of 253 respondents who work/study at PSMCHS. pre-tested administered questionnaire consisting of  15 questions was employed to collect the data from the target group. The questions referred to age, gender, marital status, level of education, monthly income, types of dental fillings, whether or not the amalgam fillings include mercury and whether or not mercury was harmful to human health. Questions were solicited to determine the respondents’ level of awareness in respect to mercury, amalgam fillings and its effect on human health.

Results: Out of 253 respondents 212 females (83.8%) and 41 males (16.2%). The economic status based on a monthly income ranged from 0-3000 SR (150 respondents/ 59.3%) to more than 3001 SR (103 respondents/ 40.7%). Based on the level of education, respondents included 82 postgraduate individuals (32.4%) and 171 undergraduate individuals (67.6%). The type of dental fillings was unknown by 21.7% of the respondents and 39.1% did not know that amalgam fillings contained mercury. In this study, 27.3% of the respondents did not know whether mercury was harmful and 24.1% did not know whether mercury in amalgam was harmful to human wellbeing.

Conclusion: The level of awareness of harmful mercury was slightly low among the respondents studied and the level of acceptance toward amalgam appears to be related to economics, specialty, age, and gender.