Your new experience awaits. Try the new design now and help us make it even better

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Dent. Med.

Sec. Reconstructive Dentistry

Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fdmed.2025.1585575

This article is part of the Research TopicProsthodontic Research and Clinical ApplicationsView all 3 articles

Misinformation or Education? A Comparative Analysis of Instagram Posts Related to Full Mouth Rehabilitation

Provisionally accepted
Amal AlfarajAmal Alfaraj1Faris AlshahraniFaris Alshahrani2Meshal AlbalawiMeshal Albalawi3Naif AlQahtaniNaif AlQahtani3Mohammed AlhajjiMohammed Alhajji3Ali AlharbiAli Alharbi1Sultan AinoosahSultan Ainoosah4Khalifa S. Al-KhalifaKhalifa S. Al-Khalifa5*
  • 1Department of Prosthodontics and Dental Implantology, Faculty of Dentistry, King Faisal University, Al-Ahsa, Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia
  • 2Department of Substitutive Dental Sciences, College of Dentistry, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Arabia
  • 3College of Dentistry, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Arabia
  • 4College of Dentistry, Taibah University, El-Madinah El Munawarah, Saudi Arabia
  • 5Department of Preventive Dental Sciences, College of Dentistry, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, Saudi Arabia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Select one of your emails

You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:

Notify me on publication

Please enter your email address:

If you already have an account, please login

You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here

Social media has transformed health communication, with Instagram emerging as a widely used platform for disseminating medical and dental information. Full Mouth Rehabilitation (FMR) is a comprehensive dental treatment aimed at restoring oral function and aesthetics, yet public awareness remains limited. This study aimed to describe the characteristics and assess the informational accuracy of Instagram posts related to Full Mouth Rehabilitation. A cross-sectional content analysis was conducted on 144 Instagram posts tagged with FMR-related hashtags. Posts were categorized by type, poster role, engagement metrics, and content accuracy. Statistical analyses compared variations in content themes, interactions, and factual accuracy. Results indicated that marketing-driven content dominated Instagram posts (75.7%), while educational posts were scarce (9%). A total of 86.8% of posts contained non-factual claims, indicating a high prevalence of misinformation. However, all educational posts were factually accurate, highlighting Instagram's potential for credible health communication when content is curated responsibly.Despite the platform's engagement potential, dental professionals contributed only 5.6% of posts, indicating an underrepresentation of expert-driven content. This study underscores Instagram's dual role as both an informative tool and a misinformation source in digital dentistry. While the platform offers opportunities for increasing FMR awareness, the predominance of non-factual promotional content limits its reliability. Enhancing the credibility of dental health communication, greater involvement from dental professionals and improved content moderation strategies. Future research should explore interventions for optimizing social media as an educational medium in advanced dental treatments

Keywords: Full mouth rehabilitation, Instagram Health Education, Digital misinformation, Social Media Dentistry, Public Engagement

Received: 28 Feb 2025; Accepted: 07 Jul 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Alfaraj, Alshahrani, Albalawi, AlQahtani, Alhajji, Alharbi, Ainoosah and Al-Khalifa. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Khalifa S. Al-Khalifa, Department of Preventive Dental Sciences, College of Dentistry, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam, 34212, Saudi Arabia

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary Material