A comparative study of oral health attitudes and behaviour using the Hiroshima University - Dental Behavioural Inventory (HU-DBI) between dental and medical students in Romania

Aims: The purpose of this study was to determine the differences in oral self-care levels between one hundred Romanian first year dental and general medical students. Materials and Methods: The examination was mainly based upon responses to a questionnaire titled 'Hiroshima University - Dental Behavioural Inventory (HU-DBI)'. Higher scores of the HU-DBI indicate better oral health attitudes/behaviour. Group comparisons were made using two-tailed Student's tests for interval level data, Mann-Whitney U-tests for ordinal level data and X2 test for categorical data. Statistical significance was based on probability values of less than 0.05. Results: The mean HU-DBI score of first year dental students was not significantly greater than that of the first year medical students (5.81 and 5.84, respectively; P>0.05). Of great significance were findings that while only 22 proportion of the medical students reported gum bleeding when they brush their teeth, 45% of the dental students did so (PConclusions: Although the difference in the HU-DBI score between the freshman dental and medical students was not statistically significant, there were considerable differences in dental health attitudes/behaviour among the two groups. Keywords: oral health behavior, dental students, medical students, dental education, gender, Romania