Assessment of dentists’ knowledge and awareness of oral manifestations of COVID-19 and the impact of pandemic waves on dental practice in India - an embedded study

Background: The cross-infection created between dental staff and patients by COVID-19 had no established protocols for the dental problems caused by the pandemic. Hence, the dentists’ knowledge regarding the oral symptoms of COVID-19 were assessed. Objective: This study reviewed the knowledge regarding oral manifestations of COVID-19 among dentists and the effect of waves 1 and 2 on dental community. Methods: In phase I, a cross-sectional survey with standardised and validated questionnaire was distributed among dentists using social media. In phase II, a qualitative in-depth interview of 8 dental clinicians (samples due to data saturation) was done to investigate the effects waves 1 and 2 on dentistry. Descriptive data was analysed via chi-square tests and Phase II analysis was carried out via Atlas-Ti software. Results: About 84.4% dental surgeons, 15 (3.7%) BDS, 48 (11.9%) MDS aspirants had good knowledge about the basic details and the oral manifestations of COVID-19, and the results were statistically significant with the participants’ knowledge about COVID-19 (p = 0.001), oral manifestations (p = 0), recommended personal prevention (p = 0.01), the necessity of RT‒PCR (p = 0) and disease fatality (p = 0.015). In phase II, four themes were formed from interviews: Source of 1st information, Outlook towards COVID-19, Impact and Self-retrospection. Conclusion: This study highlights the knowledge assessment among dental clinicians on the requirement of educational training programs about infection control practices to be followed in dentistry. The in-depth interviews of the dental clinicians revealed the need for strict infection control protocols following the pandemic.