Dental avulsion: Are the dentist prepared to the correct management?

Objective: To evaluate the knowledge of dentists from the health units (HU) of Porto Alegre - Brazil, regarding the management of avulsion of permanent teeth. Material and Methods: All dentists (n = 117) from HU were invited to answer a self-applied questionnaire regarding the treatment and preservation of avulsed permanent teeth in different clinical scenarios, based on the guidelines of the International Association of Dental Trauma (IADT). The professional data were also collected. The correlation between the performance of each professional and professional data was performed, (Student’s t test, Pearson’s and Spearman’s correlations), assuming 5% significance. Results: The response rate was 56.41%. The mean performance rate of the dentists regarding the clinical questions was 69.3%, but 37.4% had poor performance (less than 70% correct). The greatest number of hits was where the patient comes with the already replanted teeth (89.2%); 87.3% agreed in situations where the injured child reaches two hours of trauma with the tooth in a liquid medium, however in cases that period of trauma was more than two hours and tooth was dehydrated, the professionals performance was reduced (64.9%). There was a lack of knowledge about the use of intracanal medication (error rate of 56.9%); 41% are mistaken about the period to start endodontics procedures; 32.8% did the wrong about contention of avulsed teeth and clinical and radiographs follow-up. Dentists with postgraduate performed better than those without (p = 0.011). Professionals with longer time elapsed since graduation had lower performance, as well as those who reported not being satisfied with their knowledge of dental trauma (p<0.05). Conclusion: A limited knowledge of dentists from HUs of Brazil regarding the management of avulsed teeth was found. The lack in knowledge suggests the need for implementation of continuing education programs and simulation programs on approaches to dental traumas to improve dental care offered for the population.