Valoración del nivel de conocimiento sobre las patologías labiales por parte del odontólogo que labora en el sector privado de salud de Mérida, Venezuela

Abstract

The lips are a fundamental anatomic unit that provides biological aesthetics and function to the human body. Lips can be affected by different pathologies which may result in signs and symptoms affecting patients’ health, but if dentists know enough about lips structure and function they would positively affect the patient through the diagnosis and treatment plan. Aiming to establish the grade of knowledge of dentists working in private services a survey was performed to 10% of a representative sample of private practice dentists from Merida, Venezuela. It was an exploratory research within a quantitative approach and a non-experimental transversal design. Results were obtained by using descriptive statistics and the data were processed with SPSS (version 20) software. Those results indicated, according to the average of right answers separately (60%), that dentists working in private services in the aforementioned municipality show high knowledge about lip pathologies.