Eating disorders - knowledge, attitudes, management and clinical experience of Norwegian dentists

BMC Oral Health

Table 6 Percentage distribution of responses to questions relating to dentists’ experience of eating disorder (ED) patients

Question		Never/sometimes	Often	Very often/always	p
Supposed reaction from ED patients when informed that her/his oral status could be indicative of ED
	Get insulted	68	23	9
	Denies ED	44	30	26	<0.01^α
	Seeks other dentist	88	9	4	<0.05^α
	Admits ED	61	28	11	<0.01^β
	Feels good that someone has understood	45	40	16
	Seeks additional help for ED	65	24	11
	Gets a chance for improved oral health	22	46	32
	Doesn’t mean anything/no reaction	84	13	4	<0.05^β
The dentists’ experience of ED patients as dental patients
	Difficult to get in contact with	76	19	5
	Difficult to get along with	81	15	5
	Difficult to treat	73	20	7
	Wants to talk about their ED	81	14	5
	Listen to information	33	43	23
Frequency of estimated problems experienced by ED patients
	Aesthetics	19	41	40	<0.001^α
	TMD	57	29	14	<0.001^α
	Dentine hypersensitivity	15	42	43	<0.001^α
	Dental fear	46	32	21
	Fear for detection of the ED from the dental team	56	31	13	<0.01^α
	Fear for high dental costs	29	36	34
	Fear to speak about their ED with the dentist	46	37	17	<0.05^α
	Worry for what may happen during dental treatment	50	35	15	<0.05^α

p denotes difference between females and males (Mann-Whitney U-test)
^αSignificantly more female dentists responded often/very often/always than males
^βSignificantly more male dentists responded often/very often/always than females

ISSN: 1472-6831