Awareness on restoration of endodontically treated teeth with post and core among dental students-A questionnaire based survey

Abstract

Introduction: The goal of endodontic and restorative therapy is to restore the normal function and occlusion of the tooth and to maintain the stability of the dental arch.The restoration of endodontically treated teeth has many problems due to loss of tooth structure by caries, trauma,fracture, previous restoration and endodontic therapy, all of which reduces the fracture resistance of the tooth.A post and core is a restoration consisting of a post that fills a prepared root canal and a core inserted into pulp chamber that establishes the proper coronal tooth preparation. Aim:The aim of this study is to assess the awareness of undergraduate students and postgraduate students on restoration of endodontically treated teeth with post and core. Materials and methods: In this study, an online survey was conducted among the dental students in which totally 100 students comprising both undergraduate and postgraduate took part.The survey consisted of 10 questions related to the restoration of endodontically treated teeth with post and core apart from their basic details.The responses were tabulated in excel and the data was imported to SPSS software and statistical analysis was done by chi square test. Results: It was seen that overall post graduates had more awareness on post and core, than undergraduate.It was seen in this study that overall postgraduates have more awareness on post and core, than undergraduate.16% of the postgraduate students and 63% of the undergraduate students think that all endodontically treated teeth must receive a post, but it was statistically not significant(p value=0.049). Conclusion: Results of this study reflect the high knowledge of undergraduates over postgraduates about post and core use in endodontically treated tooth.This survey was used to evaluate the clinical experience of restoring endodontically treated teeth by undergraduates and postgraduates for continuous improvement of teaching and learning and curriculum development.