Dental prevention in view of teledentistry

Abstract

The COVID-19 panidemic paved the way for the rapid development of telemedicine systems and services, and has addressed previously unclear funding and legal issues. However, with the development of teledentistry, educational materials to support the training of the colleagues were limited. Dental prevention is an important part of everyday practice, especially for children. The potential of teledentistry in paediatric dentistry can be used in many ways. The aim of our research is to assess the knowledge and affinity of dentists and dental students for teledentistry in relation to the development of an uniformed teledentistry system. We conducted a questionnaire survey among dental students and dentists. The first questionnaire, consisting of 10 questions, was completed by 48 third, fourth and fifth year dental students. For the second questionnaire, which consisted of 13 questions, 108 dentist returned an evaluable result. The dental students are basically open to the topic and application of teledentistry. 42.6% of the respondents would like to participate and 44.7% are interested in further training and reading about digital dentistry. From the results, we can conclude that the great majority of both dentists and dental students are open to the new technology, but that their knowledge and skills need to be improved.