Knowledge and attitudes of early school teachers regardless of alveolar-dental trauma first aid management

Resumo

Alveolar-dental trauma occurs with high incidence during childhood and the elementary school is identified as a place where most of this type of trauma occurs. Considering that school teachers are the ones who provide immediate emergency aid, the present study aimed to verify the knowledge about alveolar-dental trauma and attitudes of teachers of early childhood education in the municipality of Araçatuba, Brazil. All municipal elementary schools (32) were invited to participate in this study, the instrument of data collection was a semi-structured, selfadministered questionnaire. The data obtained from questionnaires completed by 126 teachers was tabulated, calculated and statistically analyzed using Epi Info™ 6.04 Software. The results showed that 26% of teachers would not know how to perform an emergency treatment in case of alveolar-dental trauma and when asked about what would they do in case of the avulsion of a tooth and how would they preserve it, the approach of 28% teachers would lead to unfeasibility to immediate replantation of the tooth, only 2.2% of the teachers said they had received instructions on emergency procedures in case of dental trauma and 96.8% did not feel prepared to act in such situation. The study revealed that most teachers had little knowledge about the studied subject and felt unprepared to face dental trauma emergencies.