Evidence‐based cariology in clinical and public health practice as part of the European Core Curriculum in Cariology

Abstract

This paper is part of a series of papers contributing towards a European Core Curriculum in Cariology for undergraduate dental students. The European Core Curriculum in Cariology is the outcome of a process starting in 2006 and culminating in a joint workshop of the European Organization for Caries Research together with the Association for Dental Education in Europe, which was held in Berlin from 27 to 30 June 2010. The scope of this paper is to present the evidence‐based cariology in clinical and public health section of the European Core Curriculum in Cariology. This section was developed on the basis of international consensus on the current and future educational needs in the fields of cariology and disorders of dental hard tissues. The paper will deal with the core skills of evidence‐based dental practice within the undergraduate curriculum underpinning the dual facets of clinical cariology (relating particularly to individuals) and public health cariology (relating particularly to groups/societies). Core competencies in evidence‐based dentistry, which are generic to the undergraduate curriculum as a whole and not only cariology, are integral to lifelong learning skills within dentistry. As the clinical cariology competencies in assessment and management of caries for the individual patient are dealt with within other sections of the European Core Curriculum in Cariology, only a few relevant examples will be presented here, but for Public Health Cariology, the competencies will be explored within this document and their relationship to the principles of evidence‐based dentistry discussed.

Evaluating performance of dental caries detection methods among third-year dental students

“…This schema as well as caries detection ad lesion activity assessment must be emphasized in dental curriculum. Combining lectures and hands-on workshops as a teaching method of caries detection is one of the possibilities recommended by the European Core Curriculum [16] but until this study, it had not been used in Finland. This work investigated how easily caries detection is adopted by dental students, and how accurate their performance is using different methods after basic training.…”

Use of stainless steel crowns to restore primary molars in Germany: Questionnaire‐based cross‐sectional analysis

“…As was observed in this study, related evidence‐based concepts for treatment of primary teeth, however, do not seem yet to be a central component of the education programmes at the undergraduate level in the analysed setting. The Association for Dental Education in Europe and the European Organisation for Caries Research, which synthesized the European Core Curriculum in Cariology for undergraduate dental students, suggested that decision‐making around surgical interventions for caries management has to be evidence‐based, focused on tooth preservation, in view of the short/long‐term success and failure rates of existing management approaches …”

“…The Association for Dental Education in Europe and the European Organisation for Caries Research, which synthesized the European Core Curriculum in Cariology for undergraduate dental students, suggested that decision-making around surgical interventions for caries management has to be evidence-based, focused on tooth preservation, in view of the short/long-term success and failure rates of existing management approaches. 29,30 For primary teeth, a restoration should ideally function until the tooth sheds naturally. Different studies, however, have shown failure rates of around 20%-30% for primary molar restorations.…”

E-learning Activities to Complement Education in Cariology for Undergraduate Students

“…In fact a recent series of papers have focused on the development of a curriculum in cariology on the basis of current scientific evidence and international consensus on the current and future educational needs in this field in Europe [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11] and Latin America [12,13].…”