ACUITY OF ESTHETIC SMILE.

Nowadays, smile plays a significant role during social communication therefore the need for brighter and clear smile has grown exponentially as a result increases demands of the patient's for dental esthetic treatment. The objective for the current study was to determine the association between gender as well as professionals and non-professionals with teeth whiting perception and practices. It was an analytical cross sectional study performed at dental outpatient department of the private tertiary care center in Karachi from November 2018 till April 2019. Total sample of 400 subjects were taken through non probability convenience sampling. Data were collected by self- administered questionnaire. The questionnaire comprised of two parts; first part included the socio-demographic variables followed by variables related to assess perception and practices regarding different teeth whitening agents. Data was analyzed by using SPSS version 18, percentages and frequencies were taken out for qualitative variables followed by chi square test in order to determine the association among the variables. P value was kept significant at 0.05.Statistically significant association was found among gender with teeth whitening perception and practices (p=0.001) as well as statistically significant association was found between professional with practices and perception of teeth whitening agents (p=0.001) as compare to their counterparts. In current study more than two third of the subjects had the perception that teeth should be esthetically good for the social wellbeing but on other hand they were not practicing it. Also statistically significant difference was found among gender revealed females were more conscious regarding their smiles than males. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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