Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Meta-Analysis
. 2022 Apr 19;17(4):e0267354.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0267354. eCollection 2022.

COVID-19 vaccination acceptance among dental students and dental practitioners: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Galvin Sim Siang Lin  1 , Hern Yue Lee  2 , Jia Zheng Leong  3 , Mohammad Majduddin Sulaiman  4 , Wan Feun Loo  5 , Wen Wu Tan  6
Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

COVID-19 vaccination acceptance among dental students and dental practitioners: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Galvin Sim Siang Lin et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Background: Dental practitioners and dental students are classified as high-risk exposure to COVID-19 due to the nature of dental treatments, but evidence of their acceptance towards COVID-19 vaccination is still scarce. Hence, this systemic review aims to critically appraise and analyse the acceptability of COVID-19 vaccination among dental students and dental practitioners.

Materials and methods: This review was registered in the PROSPERO database (CRD42021286108) based on PRISMA guidelines. Cross-sectional articles on the dental students' and dental practitioners' acceptance towards COVID-19 vaccine published between March 2020 to October 2021 were searched in eight online databases. The Joanna Briggs Institute critical appraisal tool was employed to analyse the risk of bias (RoB) of each article, whereas the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine recommendation tool was used to evaluate the level of evidence. Data were analysed using the DerSimonian-Laird random effect model based on a single-arm approach.

Results: Ten studies were included of which three studies focused on dental students and seven studies focused on dental practitioners. Four studies were deemed to exhibit moderate RoB and the remaining showed low RoB. All the studies demonstrated Level 3 evidence. Single-arm meta-analysis revealed that dental practitioners had a high level of vaccination acceptance (81.1%) than dental students (60.5%). A substantial data heterogeneity was observed with the overall I2 ranging from 73.65% and 96.86%. Furthermore, subgroup analysis indicated that dental practitioners from the Middle East and high-income countries showed greater (p < 0.05) acceptance levels, while meta-regression showed that the sample size of each study had no bearing on the degree of data heterogeneity.

Conclusions: Despite the high degree of acceptance of COVID-19 vaccination among dental practitioners, dental students still demonstrated poor acceptance. These findings highlighted that evidence-based planning with effective approaches is warranted to enhance the knowledge and eradicate vaccination hesitancy, particularly among dental students.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. PRISMA flowchart.
Study selection and reasons for study exclusion according to the PRISMA guidelines.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Meta-analysis of COVID-19 vaccine acceptance.
Single-arm meta-analyses showing the weighted mean acceptance rates of COVID-19 vaccination among dental students and dental practitioners.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Aw J, Seng JJB, Seah SSY, Low LL. COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy-A scoping review of literature in high-income countries. Vaccines. 2021; 9: 900. 10.3390/vaccines9080900 ; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC8402587. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. World Health Organization. WHO Director-General’s opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19-11 March 2020. Geneva, Switzerland; 2020. [Internet]. [Cited 20 October 2021]. Availble from: https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-genera....
    1. Kumar S, Thambiraja TS, Karuppanan K, Subramaniam G. Omicron and Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2: A comparative computational study of spike protein. J Med Virol. 2022; 94: 1641–1649. 10.1002/jmv.27526 . - DOI - PubMed
    1. Zeyaullah M, AlShahrani AM, Muzammil K, Ahmad I, Alam S, Khan WH, et al.. COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2 variants: Current challenges and health concern. Front Genet. 2021; 12: 693916. 10.3389/fgene.2021.693916 ; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC8239414. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Abdool Karim SS, de Oliveira T. New SARS-CoV-2 variants—clinical, public health, and vaccine implications. N Engl J Med. 2021; 384: 1866–1868. 10.1056/nejmc2100362 ; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC8008749. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Substances