What’s new for the clinician – summaries of recently published papers (April 2023)

Abstract

Dental implants are a common treatment modality that is offered to many patients. There is therefore a good chance that many oral health professionals (dentists, dental therapists, oral hygienists, dental specialists) will encounter such patients in their private or public dental clinics. Barrak and colleagues (2023)1 have highlighted the mismatch between the knowledge and skill requirement of the general dental practitioner (GDP) in managing such patients and the training provided at undergraduate (UG) and general postgraduate (PG) levels. Studies in the UK among dental schools there and in Ireland have shown that most schools provided lecture-based information with no clinical trainingat undergraduate level on implant dentistry. This, despite the fact that most implants were in fact placed by dentists who had little training in their undergraduate training.