RESUMEN
OBJECTIVES: Dental students must complete two stages of training, namely, preclinical training on phantom head models and clinical training on actual patients to acquire the practical skills required by their Bachelor of Dental Surgery program.Our objectives are to evaluate the level of improvement of the manual skills obtained by third-year dental students after one full academic year of preclinical training courses using dexterity tests under direct and indirect vision and to compare the improvement among male and female dental students under the same conditions. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 72 preclinical students participated in our cohort trial, each of whom was assigned a random identification number that was only known to the researchers. After the beginning of the academic year, the experiment was performed under identical conditions for both the O'Connor Tweezer Dexterity Test and the Purdue Pegboard Test. The examinations were conducted at two distinct times: T0 before phantom laboratory training (the beginning of preclinical sessions) and T1 after phantom laboratory training (9 months after T0). STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: Signed-rank test of Wilcoxon over two separate periods (T0 and T1), comparisons were made between the direct and indirect visual dexterity test scores. In addition, the Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare results across gender. The statistical significance (p-value) was set at below 0.05 with a confidence level of 95%. RESULTS: A statistically significant difference was detected between the T0 and T1 assessments on the Purdue Pegboard Test and the O'Connor Tweezer Dexterity Test for all selected dentistry students in both direct and indirect conditions (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Further investigation in other dental departments or schools, particularly those with different entry standards, is required prior to making a definitive conclusion about the use of these dexterity assessments as predictors of prospective dental students' performance.
RESUMEN
Background: Atraumatic dental extraction is the way forward in modern dentistry. This study aims to compare the effectiveness of automated periotome with conventional periotome with regard to operating time, postoperative gingival laceration, and bone and tooth structure fractures. Methods: This is an in vitro study of forty posterior teeth of sheep mandibles. Ten sound healthy mandibles were selected, and each mandible was then divided into two quadrants with two teeth in each quadrant. Teeth were then extracted by conventional periotome for the first group (one quadrant) and by automated periotome for the second group (other quadrants). A statistically significant P value is set at below 0.05 with a 95% confidence interval. Results: No bone fracture was seen in any of the cases of automated periotome with a significance of 0.004 when compared to the fractures seen in seven cases in the conventional group. Whereas comparing the other parameters among the different groups did not show any significant difference. Conclusion: It is worthwhile to use the automated periotome in simple extractions, especially when implants are considered in the treatment plan.
RESUMEN
OBJECTIVE: The main aim of this present systematic review is to ascertain whether a conservative endodontic cavity (ConsAC) has a better fracture resistance than a traditional access cavity (TradAC) in endodontically treated molars. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Three independent reviewers researched without limits in multiple engines: PubMed, ScienceDirect, Scopus, ResearchGate, EBSCOhost, Wiley Online Library, and Google Scholar, in addition to reference and hand search. Articles were chosen according to a certain inclusion and exclusion criteria, which, in brief, are in vitro studies assessing the fracture resistance difference between ConsAC and TradAC performed on extracted sound human molar teeth. A quality assessment criteria was produced to evaluate the chosen articles and categorized them according to their risk of bias into low, moderate and high. RESULTS: Out of a total of 105 studies, which were obtained from seven different search engines, only eight in vitro studies were included after eliminating the duplicates followed by the application of the eligibility criteria. Five of the articles showed low risk of bias while the others revealed a moderate risk of bias. CONCLUSION: To sum up, there is insufficient evidence to give a final decision whether ConsAC is more advantageous than TradAC in terms of fracture resistance and further studies regarding this topic are needed.