Stress and dental caries among dental students at Pharos university in Alexandria.

INTRODUCTION: Stress may increase the susceptibility to dental caries in humans. This study aimed to assess stress levels among dental students at Pharos University in Alexandria and explore their relationship with dental caries across different academic years. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This study was an analytical cross-sectional design, conducted among 80 first- and fifth-grade dental students at Pharos University. The participants were asked to sign an informed consent form before the study began. DESQ was used to measure the stress of dental students. Dental caries was evaluated using DMFT. RESULTS: The results found that being a female student significantly increased the self-efficacy belief category of stress (B = 1.3, P = 0.013 ). Gender did not affect faculty and administration, workload, patient treatment, clinical training, performance pressure, other/personal factors, as well as total stress (P > 0.05). Being a student in grade 5 increased the level of all categories of stress significantly when compared with students in grade 1 (B = 3.5, P = 0.000, B = 9.8, P = 0.000, B = 4.9, P = 0.000, B = 13.2, P = 0.000, B = 0.58, P = 0.017, B = 9.9, P = 0.000, B = 5.1, P = 0.000 and B = 23.6, P = 0.000 respectively). When examining the relation between stress and dental caries, it was found that self-efficacy beliefs (r = 0.2, P = 0.076) and clinical training (r = 0.081, P = 0.475) had no relation with dental caries. However, faculty and administration (r = 0.4, P = 0.001) workload (r = 0.5, P = 0.000), patient treatment (r = 0.43, P = 0.000), performance pressure (r = 0.3, P = 0.007 ) and other/personal factors (r = 0.4, p = 0.001) had a significant direct correlation with dental caries among examined dental students, and this is lead to a high significant direct relation between the total stress and dental caries (r = 0.4, P = 0.003). CONCLUSIONS: Environmental stress among dental students had a significant positive effect on dental caries.