Practice patterns in prescribing oral care products by dental practitioners

This paper describes the practice patterns of dental practitioners in how they choose oral care products for prescriptions to their patients. One hundred seventy-three respondents were selected for a medico-sociological study. They were divided into 3 groups based on their work experience: less than 5 years (30.0%), 5–9 years (40.0%) and 10–14 years (30.0%). The majority of respondents were dental therapists (71.0%), and the rest were paedodontists, dental surgeons, periodontists and orthodontists (11.0%, 7.0%, 4.0% and 1.0%, respectively). The study was conducted using a questionnaire specially developed by us, which consisted of 34 questions grouped into several domains. Analysis of the obtained results has shown that the majority of dental practitioners (88.7%) were competent in prescribing oral care products. Professionals with work experience over 10 years often choose oral care products incorrectly; 80.6% of them believe that long-term use of personal oral care products containing antiseptic components affects the oral microbial flora, which suggests that it is necessary to amend the existing classification of toothpastes.