Knowledge of stem cells among Dentistry undergraduates

ABSTRACT

Introduction:Stem cells (SCs) enabled great advances in different health fields, including Dentistry. Objective: To investigate the knowledge of last year Dentistry undergraduate students regarding SCs and its applications. Material and methods: A questionnaire with open-ended questions was applied to the students, followed by qualitative-quantitative analysis involving the clustering of the answers. Results: The majority of students (70%) defined SCs adequately, only half of the interviewees (48.8%) were unable to classify SCs and just 26.2% classified it correctly. On the question about SCs from dental tissues, 77.5% reported it was possible and 70.9% knew which tissues could be used. The main source of knowledge was the media (36.4%), followed by the University (26.6%); 88.5% stated that the topic was only addressed in the first year of the course. Consequently, only 7.5% reported being capable of answering questions about it. Conclusion:The students are not receiving enough information about the topic.