Awareness of Forensic Odontology among Dental Professionals in Saudi Arabia: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Background- Forensic odontology has an important role in the recognition of abuse among persons of all ages. Dental professionals have a major role to play in keeping accurate dental records and providing all necessary information so that legal authorities may recognize malpractice, negligence, fraud or abuse, and identify unknown humans.

Aim- The present, review was conducted to assess knowledge and awareness of forensic odontology among dental professionals in Saudi Arabia.

Methodology- A review of relevant cross‐sectional descriptive and observational studies was conducted regarding the level of awareness and knowledge of forensic odontology among dentists and dental students. The retraction of data in this study was undertaken from June 2013 to October 2021. Five out of 20 were included and 15 were excluded from the studies in Saudi Arabia in the present review after conducting a search of both electronic and manual scientific databases.

Results- Dental age estimation methods were known to 85.9% of dental practioners. However, only 50% of the dental students were aware of it. Only 25% of the dental students were aware of the child abuse cases, as compared to the findings of another study that revealed 58.1% of knowledge among dental practitioners. About 87.5% of the dental students were aware of bite marks and 20% of about lip prints. About 97.5 % of the dental students revealed that forensic dentistry was not included in their undergraduate curriculum.

Conclusion- The overall, knowledge and awareness level of dental professionals was inadequate. However, dental practitioners were reported to have more knowledge and awareness and adequate practice compared to dental students on certain aspects such as dental age estimation, lip print identification, child abuse cases identification and dental record maintenance.