Current cariology education in dental schools in Spanish-speaking Latin American countries.

This study sought to provide an overview of current cariology education in Spanish-speaking Latin American dental schools. Data collection was via an eighteen-item survey with questions about curriculum, methods of diagnosis and treatment, and instructors' perceptions about cariology teaching. The response rate was 62.1 percent (n=54), and distribution of participating schools by country was as follows: Bolivia (four), Chile (four), Colombia (twenty-four), Costa Rica (one), Cuba (one), Dominican Republic (two), El Salvador (two), Mexico (six), Panama (two), Peru (four), Puerto Rico (one), Uruguay (two), and Venezuela (one). Forty percent of the responding schools considered cariology the key axis of a course, with a cariology department in 16.7 percent. All schools reported teaching cariology, but with varying hours and at varying times in the curriculum, and 77.8 percent reported having preclinical practices. The majority reported teaching most main teaching topics, except for behavioral sciences, microbiology, saliva and systemic diseases, caries-risk factors, root caries, erosion, and early caries management strategies. The most frequently taught caries detection methods were visual-tactile (96.3 percent), radiographic (92.6 percent), and the International Caries Detection and Assessment System (ICDAS) (61.1 percent). Respondents said their schools' clinics make an operative treatment decision when radiolucency is in the inner half of enamel (42.3 percent) for radiographic criteria and when the lesion is visually non-cavitated (5.8 percent). All respondents reported that their schools teach preventive strategies, but only 43.4 percent said they tie it to risk assessment and 40.7 percent said they implement nonsurgical management regularly.

Perfil epidemiológia en niños de 5 a 12 años para higiene oral, caries y gingivitis de escuelas del área comunitaria de la Escuela Colombiana de Medicina / Epidemiological profiles in children from 5 to 12 years old for oral hygiene, dental caries and gingivitis from community schools of Colombian Medicine School

El propósito de este estudio fue el de evaluar la situación actual higiene oral, caries, gingivitis de las escuelas del área de influencia de la Escuela Colombiana de Medicina, que vienen recibiendo atención odontológica desde 1985 dentro del programa del área comunitaria, con el fin de planificar mejor los resultados de toda índole que actualmente invierte la institución en el desarrollo del proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje y tener elementos de planeación de estrategias dentro del marco de la ley 100 de seguridad social de 1993. Para llevar a cabo este estudio de tipo descriptivo de corte, se tomaron como universo los 1.300 alumnos vinculados al prograsma educativo de las escuelas del área de influencia de la Escuela Colombina de Medicina: Fundación Ana Restrepo del corral, Fundación Santa María, Concentración, Escolar San Isidro y concentración Escolar San Benito. Posteriormente se realizó un muestreo estratificado donde se obtuvo una muestra estadísticamente representativa con una confiabilidad del 99, un margen de error del 3 y equivalente a 710 alumnos distribuidos por género, edad y escuela.