Assessing the Knowledge of Students about Dental Bleaching in Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Iran

Statement of the Problem: An attractive smile and white teeth give self-confidence and the impression of health for social and interpersonal success. Purpose: To assess the overall knowledge of dental bleaching and tendency to do that among the students of Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman. Materials and Method: This is a cross-sectional study enrolled 384 students who were selected by simple random sampling. Data collection tool was a valid and reliable self-administered researcher-made questionnaire about demographic information, health behavior, tooth bleaching and tendency to do it with 8 questions about the knowledge of dental bleaching. Data were analyzed by using SPSS version 21 and regression analysis at a significant level of 0.05. Results: Overall, 40.54% of the students were female students and the rest were male ones. Most likely source for gaining information was internet. In this regard, 29 individuals were dissatisfied with tooth color, 27 ones with the appearance of teeth, 13.5% have done tooth bleaching and 69% had tendency to do that. The preferred knowledge was about the difference between scaling and root planning (SRP) and bleaching. There was no significant difference between age, sex and marital status variables with the knowledge of dental bleaching. Tooth color satisfaction increased the tendency to do bleaching about 1.87 times. Conclusion: The study highlights that 69 % of the students had a tendency to do the bleaching, their knowledge was moderate and there was no statistical relationship between knowledge, sex and marital variables. Color variable had an overall positive effect on the tendency to do the bleaching.