Fatores que influenciam na decisão de alunos de graduação para abordagem de restaurações defeituosas em dentes decíduos

Abstract

This study aimed to evaluate factors that influence undergraduate students in the treatment decision for defective restorations in primary teeth. Undergraduate dental students from public and private universities received an e-mail, forwarded by professors and colleges, containing the link to the online questionnaire. It contained questions related to students, teaching institution, and five pairs of clinical cases of patients with defective restorations in primary teeth. The pairs of clinical cases contained the same information about the dental element and the patient, except for one characteristic of the child that could influence the treatment decision (gender, skin color, behavior, caries risk, and income). The response options were: 'follow-up', 'recontouring and polishing', 'repair' or 'replace defective filling'. The responses of the approaches for each clinical case pair were compared with each other considering the characteristics of the children using McNemar test. Subsequently, for the multiple analyses, each clinical cases pair, a response variable was created: 'changed treatment' and 'did not change treatment depending on the characteristics of the child. Multilevel logistic regression models were used to estimate the association between the different outcomes of treatment possibilities (do not change and change) and predictor variables of students and institutions. Taking into account the contextual level, students (1st level) were grouped into their respective universities (2nd level). The level of statistical significance for the analyses was 5%. A total of 341 undergraduate students participated in the study, 73.9% were female. The treatment decision for defective restorations in primary teeth varied according to gender, behavior, caries risk of the child, the student's educational background, and the region of the educational institution. 20.2% of the students were more invasive when the patient was male. 72.4% and 68.6% were more invasive in children with difficult behavior and high caries risk, respectively. It can be concluded that both patient, student and institution characteristics were able to influence the treatment decision for defective restorations in primary teeth.