Awareness, attitude and barriers toward evidence based dental practice among dental practitioners in mansoura city, Egypt

Background: Evidence Based Dentistry (EBD) is a patient-centered approach to treatment decisions, which provides personalized dental care based on the most current scientific knowledge. Many dental professionals in Egypt did not study critical evaluation of research material in Dental Schools. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to determine knowledge, attitude and barriers of dental practitioners towards EBD. Materials and Methods: This is a questionnaire based cross-sectional study which was conducted at The School of Dentistry, Mansoura University. The questionnaire was divided into four parts; the first part included demographic data, the second one included questions about participants' EBD knowledge, the third part included questions about participants' attitude, and the forth one included questions about participants' barriers toward utilization of EBD. Results: there was no significant difference between males and females concerning their familiarity with EBD (p=0.987), also increasing age of participants did not affect their familiarity (p=0.083). The most familiar category was those with doctoral degrees (20.8%), and practitioners with 6 to 10 years experience were more familiar than others (20.5%). The most familiar evidence terms were case series and case reports; however the least one was hierarchy of evidence. There was no significance difference between participants who depended on clinical experience and those who depended on EBD (0.806). About 31 % of the participants depended on electronic databases to get their information. Greater than 50% of the participants had positive attitude toward EBD. Time was the greater barrier against EBD. Conclusion: it is highly recommended to include EBD into undergraduate curriculum of all Dental Schools in Egypt.