No abstract

The aim of this study was to explore the materials and procedures used by students in dental schools across Europe for teaching ixed prosthodontics. An online questionnaire, containing twenty-eight dichotomous, multiple-choice, and Likert scale rating questions, was sent to students in forty dental schools. After excluding dental schools in which less than 10 percent of the students responded, 775 questionnaires from ten schools remained for statistical analysis. Among these respondents, acrylic resin teeth were said to be the most commonly used material during preclinical practice (46-96 percent), and use of extracted teeth varied from 8 to 65 percent. At nine of the ten institutions, metal-ceramic was reported to be most commonly used for ixed dental prostheses. There was large variation in the type of inish line for a metal-ceramic ixed dental prosthesis: students at ive institutions reported using a shoulder inish line, three a chamfer inish line, and two a shoulder-bevel inish line. A similar variation was observed with regard to the inal cementation of metal-ceramic ixed dental prostheses: students at four institutions reporting most frequently using glass ionomer cement, with three using zinc phosphate cement and three using carboxylate cement. The responding European dental students varied considerably in their opinions about whether they were preclinically properly trained for the irst preparation on a patient and in their overall rating of their education in ixed prosthodontics. Responding students in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Nijmegen, The Netherlands, rated their ixed prosthodontics training overall the highest. Overall, this study found a wide variation amongst dental schools with regard to their education in ixed prosthodontics and their rating of this teaching.Dr. Brand is Assistant Professor,

Education in fabricating single-tooth fixed prostheses and multi-teeth fixed prostheses is an important component of the dental curriculum. To explore the opinion of dental students on this component of the curriculum, a web-based survey was carried out among the students of the 3 dental schools in the Netherlands. The 389 completed questionnaires revealed that the education in fabricating single-tooth fixed prostheses and multi-teeth fixed prostheses started in different years of study at the 3 dental schools. Another striking difference is that the methods of preparation and the choice of materials for single-tooth fixed prostheses and multi-teeth fixed prostheses in the pre-clinical practicum in the programmes was not the same. The students of the 3 dental schools seemed to have a reasonably positive opinion of their preclinical training preparation for treating patients. The opinions of the Nijmegen Dental School students were significantly more positive than the opinions of the students at the 2 other dental schools.