Title

Oral and maxillofacial surgery specialty awareness among medical undergraduates in North India: A cross-sectional study

Authors

Ajit Kumar Vishwakarma^1,*, Manisha Upadhyay², Rajaram Yadav³, Sanjeev Kumar Singh⁴, Neeraj Kumar Dhiman⁵ & Naresh Kumar Sharma⁵

Affiliation

¹Department of Dentistry, Government Medical College, Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, India; ²Department of Anatomy, Government Medical College, Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, India; ³Department of Community Medicine, Government Medical College, Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, India; ⁴Department of Dentistry, SMMH Government Medical College, Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India; ⁵Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Faculty of Dental Sciences, IMS, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India; *Corresponding author

Email

Ajit Kumar Vishwakarma - E-mail: ajitweb88@gmail.com
Manisha Upadhyay - E-mail: manishaupadhyay733@gmail.com
Rajaram Yadav - E-mail: rajaram.iips@gmail.com
Sanjeev Kumar Singh - E-mail: san.bajaj88@gmail.com
Neeraj Kumar Dhiman - E-mail: drnkdhiman@yahoo.co.in
Naresh Kumar Sharma - E-mail: drnsharma2001@gmail.com

Article Type

Research Article

Date

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

Abstract

Oral and maxillofacial surgery though being a well-established specialty in India, still struggles for proper referrals from medical specialities. Majority of the referrals to this speciality turn up exclusively through dental practitioners while lacking the same from medical counterparts. The familiarity of medical undergraduates with the scope of Oral and maxillofacial surgery is vital to set the stage for appropriate patient referrals in future. Henceforth, a cross-sctional study was conducted among medical undergraduates in order to assess their understanding of this specialty by generating an electronic questionniare. A total of 301 participants from various medical institutions completed the questionnaire. Cronbach’s alpha was employed to measure participants referral preferances for common maxillofacial surgery procedures. The study evaluated an alpha coefficient of 0.79 which suggests a justifiable reliability. Thus, this study shows the paramount importance of Oral and maxillofacial surgery awareness among medical undergraduates to pave the way for suitable referrals. Moreover, it recommends an obvious need for introduction and comprehensive exposure to this speciality as a part of medical curriculum.

Keywords

Dentistry, maxillofacial surgery, medical undergraduate

Citation

Vishwakarma et al. Bioinformation 21(12): 4629-4633 (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.