Needlestick injuries in dentists and their assistants in Kerman, Iran: Prevalence, knowledge, and practice

BACKGROUND AND AIM:Needlestick (NS) injuries are one of the most important subjects in the dental field which cancause so many dangerous blood-borne diseases. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence, knowledge, andpractice of dentists and their assistants about exposure tosharp contaminated instruments in Kerman, Iran, in 2012.METHODS:In this cross-sectional study, self-administered questionnaires were distributed among 190 dentists and 250assistants. Data were analyzed bychi-square and 2-sample tests.RESULTS:32% of dentists and 30.7% of assistants had experienced NS injury. The mean scores of knowledge andpractice in dentists were 4.88 ± 1.69 and 3.37 ± 0.70 from the maximum scores of 10 and 4. There was only asignificant correlation between knowledge score and gender (P = 0.02), and a near significant correlation betweenpractice and gender (P = 0.06) (male > female). However, they had no correlation with age, length of professionalexperience, and educational degree. In assistants, the mean score of practice was 2.84 ± 0.67 from the maximum scoreof 5. Furthermore, 96.6% of dentists and 76.3% ofassistants had been vaccinated against hepatitis B.CONCLUSIONS:The obtained results show that the practice level of dentist in NS injury prevention and management isgood but their knowledge and also their assistants’ practice is undesirable. The level of knowledge and practice was thesame for general and specialist dentists. It seems that specialist dentists cooperate better in vaccination and measuringof anti-HBs antibody titre.