Title

White spot lesion management: Knowledge and practices during fixed orthodontic treatment among Saudi dentist -A cross-sectional study

Authors

Hammad Saleh Alshyai^1,*, Muhammad Atif Saleem Agwan², Nada Mohammed Aloufi³, Eyad A. AlTamimi¹, Abdullah A. Aloyouni¹ & Batool Nasser Alhabib⁴

Affiliation

¹College of Dentistry, Qassim University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; ²Department of Conservative Dental Sciences, College of Dentistry, Qassim University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; ³Department of Orthodontics and Paediatric Dentistry, College of Dentistry, Qassim University, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; ⁴Department of Preventive Dental Sciences, College of Dentistry, King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; *Corresponding author

Email

Hammad Saleh Alshyai - E-mail: Hammadsh1818@gmail.com
Muhammad Atif Saleem Agwan - E-mail: m.abdulsaleem@qu.edu.sa
Nada Mohammed Sulaiman Aloufi - E-mail: Na.Aloufi@qu.edu.sa
Eyad A. AlTamimi - E-mail: eyad1111q@gmail.com
Abdullah A. Aloyouni - E-mail: abdullah.a3.uni@gmail.com
Batool Nasser Alhabib - E-mail: Batoolalhabib99@gmail.com

Article Type

Research Article

Date

Received November 15, 2025; Revised December 15, 2025; Accepted December 15, 2025, Published December 15, 2025

Abstract

White spot lesions (WSLs), a consequence of orthodontic treatment, have a detrimental effect on the aesthetic result of orthodontic treatment. Therefore, it is of interest to assess knowledge and practice levels of dentists practicing orthodontics regarding the prevention and treatment of WSLs in Saudi Arabia. Hence, this cross-sectional observational study included 188 orthodontic practitioners in Saudi Arabia with at least one year of experience utilizing structured electronic questionnaire of 19 closed-ended items. Knowledge assessment revealed that 133 (70.7%) had high scores and 55 (29.3%) had intermediate scores while in practice assessment, 154 (81.9%) achieved high scores, while 34 (18.1%) had intermediate scores with most participants having 1-4 years of experience demonstrated high knowledge (63.4%) and practice (76.8%) levels. Thus, we show that the dentist practicing orthodontics showed high knowledge and practice regarding the prevention and treatment of white spot lesions with years of experience were significantly associated with the levels of knowledge.

Keywords

Knowledge, practice, white spot lesions, years of experience

Citation

Alshyai et al. Bioinformation 21(12): 4492-4498 (2025)

Edited by

P Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.