Knowledge and perception toward orthodontic skeletal temporary anchorage devices among undergraduate dental students in Saudi Arabia

Aim: Temporary anchorage devices (TADs) have become the routine treatment tools for orthodontic treatment. The aim of this study was to assess the knowledge about TADs among the undergraduate students of Saudi Arabia. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional web-based questionnaire was sent to 301 undergraduate dental students across different dental colleges in Saudi Arabia from third year to internship. This prevalidated 21-item questionnaire was sent through Google Form to different dental student groups. The questionnaire included details related to demography, knowledge related to TADs, and the role of continuing dental education in building the knowledge related to TADs. Descriptive statistical analysis and the chi-square test were used to evaluate the difference in the response to the questions among the different years of undergraduate students. Results: Approximately 88% of the interns could recognize that TADs are the Implants for skeletal anchorage and 57.8% defined TADs as “Implants for skeletal anchoring. Approximately 51.8% of the respondents felt that their knowledge was obtained from their undergraduate orthodontic studies. Sixty-one percent of the respondents stated their inability to diagnose cases that would benefit from orthodontic TADs. Most of the dental students from different years preferred the introduction of the TADs in the fifth-year curriculum. There existed a significant difference between the responses given by different-year dental students (P < 0.05). Conclusion: Internship students had comparatively better knowledge regarding TADs than the undergraduate students. This warrants the need to incorporate the new techniques and treatment modalities in the undergraduate orthodontic curriculum.