Abstract
Background:
In today’s world of digital dentistry, dental photography plays an important role as multilevel significance and represents the synonym of contemporary dentistry. Thus, we aimed at evaluating the acquaintance of practice, opportunity and morals of dental photography in everyday practice among undergraduate dental students.
Design and Methods:
The current research was an observational cross-sectional study. Total 233 students participated; each was given questionnaire consisted of three parts covering the following aspects: questions 1 to 3 on the practice of dental photography, questions 4 to 7 on morals in dental photography and question 8 to 11 on opportunities of dental photography. The answers were tabulated and statistically analysed and association with the factors were tested for significance using Chi-square tests, and P<0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Results:
The total response rate was 86%. Among the 201 respondents, 100 were males and 101 females; 96% male students were taking photographs and 93% females were taking photographs, on regular basis. Phone cameras (41.3%) were the most commonly used device followed by DSLR cameras. Surveyed students mentioned patient education (53.2%) as most needed requirement for taking photographs, followed by treatment planning (49.8%) and monitoring of the treatment outcome (34.3%). Ninety-one percent of students feel that there is an opportunity for advancement in dental photography techniques.
Conclusions:
The participants aware of dental photography, but they require detail insight on proper capturing of photographs and morals, with regards to confidentiality of the patient and patient consent.
Significance for public health
Taking pictures in dentistry is not only capturing an object. It is an art where clinician should be able to capture the details of the concern area and the image should be self-explanatory. Especially taking an intra-oral picture requires proper equipment’s, correct camera settings, flashes, reflectors, and mirrors etc, these all are not taught in routine dental courses. Thus, each dentist needs additional training and knowledge in this field.