The awareness of Eco-friendly dentistry among Egyptian dental practitioners: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background: Dental health care is keen to promote human oral health. In order to achieve such goal, dentists use different materials and instruments and produce biomedical wastes which propose threatening challenges to the environmental balance. To oppose these ill-effects, the term “Eco-friendly Dentistry or Green Dentistry” has been established to prevent pollution and achieve sustainability. Aim of the study: This study was done to determine the awareness of Eco-friendly dentistry among dental health care practitioners in Egypt in preparation for future implementation. Materials and methods: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted involving 380 Egyptian dentists distributed across different geographic regions in Egypt. The survey consisted of 41 questions to assess knowledge, attitude and practicing of Eco-friendly dentistry. The collected data were analyzed with SPSS V25 IBM Inc. by using logistic regression and liner regression and p<0.05 was fixed as the level of significance. Results: The results showed that 248 dentists had heard before the term “green dentistry”, 115 dentists heard about it for the first time and only 19 dentists already practicing it. Moreover, the Egyptian dentists believed that the main factor for adoption of green dentistry in Egypt was knowledge (301), then cost (57) dentists and finally the time (24). Conclusion: The scientific knowledge of the Egyptian dentists regarding green dentistry is good enough. However, the economic barriers may be a problem about its application.