Abstract
ABSTRACT This study sought to provide an overview of current cariology education for undergraduate Brazilian dental students. Data collection was via a Portuguese version of a 12-item questionnaire (Schulte et al., 2011) that was sent to all Brazilian dental schools (n = 219). The response rate was 57.0% (n = 125). Of the schools that returned the questionnaire, 84.8% supported the development of a Brazilian cariology curriculum. The units responsible for teaching cariology were predominantly operative dentistry (49.6%), pediatric dentistry (49.6%), dental public health (44.8%), and cariology (32%). Theoretical teaching of cariology (74.4%) and pre-clinical exercises (63.2%) were cited to occur mainly during the second year of the course, while clinical activities were placed in the third (71.2%) and fourth (64.8%) years. Among respondents, 76.8% of the schools included dental erosion and 86.4% included defects of dental hard tissues, such as abrasion, in teaching cariology. This survey was able to determine the panorama of cariology education in Brazil and to detect some differences among Brazilian geographic areas. The promotion of a workshop to discuss the topics that should be taught to undergraduate dental students and the development of a Brazilian core curriculum in cariology would be likely to reduce the differences in teaching cariology in Brazil.
Highlights
Dental caries has shown a marked decrease in both incidence and prevalence in the Brazilian population [1]
An epidemiological survey performed in 2010 showed that Brazil presents low caries prevalence in a sample of 12 year old subjects according to the World Health Organization (WHO) classification [2]
Cariology Education in Brazil consent were available online and a web link was sent by email to the coordinators of all 219 Brazilian dental schools, a well as to the 73 that answered the preliminary survey using an account created for this purpose
Summary
Dental caries has shown a marked decrease in both incidence and prevalence in the Brazilian population [1]. Oral health teaching has been fragmented, and because of this, the adequate synthesis of the knowledge is not observed [4] This model reflects on the biological dentist formation that does not consider social determinants to establish clinical management. A survey was conducted between 2009 and 2011 among Spanishspeaking Latin American dental schools from 16 countries, which included questions about curriculum, diagnosis, treatment, and perceptions, all with regard to cariology [12]. After this project, regional workshops to discuss aspects of teaching cariology were organized in Colombia using the document of the “European Cariology Core Curriculum” as basis for the discussions.
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