Conhecimento de docentes e discentes de um curso de Odontologia sobre os aspectos legais que envolvem a utilização de dentes humanos extraídos

This study assessed the level of knowledge of teachers and students of a Dentistry Course about the ethical and legal aspects involved in the acquisition and handling of extracted human dental elements. We applied a semistructured questionnaire to the teachers and students from the 2 nd period, since they constitute the users of human teeth in preclinical teaching and research activities. Data were analyzed using the descriptive statistics for the closed questions, in addition to the Collective Subject Speech for the open questions. We interviewed 51 teachers from the total of 55 and 201 students from the total of 288, of which 72.55% and 72.60%, respectively, recognized the dental element as an organ. As for the way to obtain the teeth, 39.49% of the students reported that they acquired teeth in dental offices and 33.76% in health units, where 91.04% of the students and 80.39% of the teachers are unaware of any commercialization. Regarding biosafety, both students (78.61%) and teachers (90.20%) recognize the biological risk in the handling of these elements and perform some type of disinfection. When considering the legal aspects, 68.63% of the teachers and 20.10% of the students stated that they were aware of the existence of a regulation, although this statement was not explicitly reflected in the obtained responses. From the textual material generated by the open questions, we raised three categories (way to obtain the used teeth, commercialization of teeth and biological risk), which were interpreted in the light of speeches added by the interviewed segments (teachers and students). We can conclude that both teachers and students have shown little knowledge about the legal aspects involved in the acquisition and handling of extracted human dental elements.