Knowledge, Attitude, and Barriers to Fluoride Application as a Preventive Measure among Oral Health Care Providers

Table 7

Logistic regression model for dentists who believed (dependent variable) that caries cannot be prevented because it is a multifactorial disease.

Variables	Agree (%)	Disagree (%)	Not sure (%)	Odds ratio	CI (95%)
Gender
Males	30.7	58.3	11.0	0.23	0.89–0.43	0.49
Females (reference)	30.9	61.7	7.4	—	—	—
Age group (years)
≤30	31.3	56.6	12.1	1.01	0.38–2.39	0.16
31–45	29.2	63.2	7.5	0.33	1.40–0.74	0.55
≥46 (reference)	32.0	56.0	12.0	—	—	—
Country of undergraduate dental education
North America	19.4	75.0	5.6	0.67	0.24–1.57	0.15
Europe	22.9	68.6	8.6	0.88	0.02–1.77	0.06
Asia	14.3	73.2	12.5	1.05	0.10–2.01	0.03
Middle East (reference)	45.7	43.8	10.5	—	—	—
Specialty
General dental practitioners	35.0	56.9	8.0	0.18	1.20–0.84	0.73
Specialists caring for children	17.9	71.8	10.3	0.54	0.34–1.43	0.23
Other specialists (reference)	31.2	57.8	10.9	—	—	—
Years of practice
≥10	32.6	57.6	9.7	0.48	1.45–0.50	0.34
<10 (reference)	28.4	61.1	10.5	—	—	—
Area of practice
Rural	39.3	52.4	8.3	0.42	1.04–0.20	0.18
Urban (reference)	26.3	62.8	10.9	—	—	—
Work place
Primary care clinics	36.3	56.0	7.7	0.50	1.54–0.53	0.34
Specialty care clinics	30.1	57.5	12.4	0.59	1.50–0.32	0.20
Private (reference)	18.4	73.7	7.9	—	—	—
Restorative treatment should take precedence over prevention
Agree	60.0	35.0	5.0	1.61	3.49–0.27	0.09
Disagree	22.8	67.7	9.5	0.05	1.82–1.72	0.96
Not sure	50.0	21.4	28.6	—	—	—