Association between Sleeping Pattern, Oral Health Habits and Academic Performance among Dental Students

Author(s):

Abdullah Abdulghani Alghamdi, Rayan Ali Alshahrani, Abdullah Alzaydani and Mukhatar Ahmed Javali*

Background: The level of success that students achieve from education has far associations with the personal, social and professional development. Researchers have connected poor students’ achievement with too many many factors, among which sleep pattern along with oral health status are less explored to associate with academic performance. Objective: To assess the association between sleep pattern, oral health status and academic performance among the group of dental students. Material and methods: A descriptive cross-sectional questionnaire study was conducted among dental students of King Khalid University, Abha. Self-administered structured questionnaire was used to assess the sleeping pattern, habits, self-reported oral health status and academic performance. Data description was done for frequency and percentage analysis. Chisquare test was done to test the association between and p-values less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Results: Among the 135 participants completed the study male participants were 114 (84.4%) while female participants were 21 (15.6%) with 83% between 21 to 25years age group. Most of participants were smokers. Miswak was the most common type of tool used for oral hygiene, 58.5% of participants reported to visit a dentist when needed and gingival bleeding was reported among 46.7%. 6 to 8 hours was the reported sleeping hours per night by most of the participants. The association between academic performance with smoking, frequency of dental visit and repeated awaking during night among the students was found to be statistically significant with p-values less than 0.05. Conclusion: The results of this study showed that dental students are unknowingly exposed to unhealthy sleep habits and these difficulties in sleep pattern along with unhealthy oral health habits can influence the academic performance of the students.