Evaluating Oral Hygiene Practices: Tooth Brushing and Miswak Use in Dental Students at King Abdulaziz University

Abstract

Objective: The aim of this study was to assess tooth brushing behavior and to determine the prevalence of toothbrush, miswak, toothbrush-plus-miswak usage for teeth cleaning among undergraduate dental students, faculty of dentistry at king Abdulaziz university (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia) based on gender and level of oral hygiene education Materials and Methods: Out of 500
registered dental students at the faculty of dentistry, 300 dental students (150 male and 150 female students) mean age = 20.1 ± 1.6 years) participated in the study (response rate 99.8%). The students were randomly selected from 2nd to 6th year dental students and they were classified based on the level of their oral hygiene education and gender. The data for this study was collected through selfadministered questionnaires and was analyzed by using the SPSS-PC package. The statistical significance was determined by the chi-square test and cross tabulation, and the level of significance was set at P ≤ 0.05. Results: Out of 299 dental students, 4% (11 students) have an excellent tooth brushing behavior, 57% (171 students) have good tooth brushing behavior and 39% (117 students)
have poor tooth brushing behavior. The majority of the dental students, 77.26% (231 students) were used only tooth brush for teeth cleaning, especially females at the post education oral hygiene level with statistically significant difference. The level of education and gender were significantly associated with the type of oral cleaning tool used. The use of miswak alone for teeth cleaning among
the dental students is poor Conclusions: Dental students had satisfactory tooth brushing behavior, particularly in the final clinical years, nevertheless, this improvement was limited and students should be advanced for more dental health training. Early exposure to dental health education was suggested to improve the dental students. Miswak is an effective and alternative tool for oral hygiene and should be promoted and recommended for use with the toothbrush for teeth cleaning