Effects of an Improved Endodontics Teaching Model on the Technical Quality of Root Canal Treatment

The quality of the preclinical training can affect the treatment done by students. The lack of training with electronic root canal length measurement devices (ERCLMD) can result in inadequate root canal treatment (RCT). In this study, we evaluated the effects of an improved endodontic teaching model on the technical quality of root canal treatment. This study aimed to assess whether the change in teaching modality will result in more accurate root canal treatment, and, to investigate whether the students benefit from this exercise. Extracted teeth were prepared and placed into a plastic container filled with alginate, the lip hook was placed, then the experimental group (16 students) measured the working length (WL) using ERCLMD and then the WL was confirmed using radiographs. The other two groups (n1 =28) (n2=21) were trained with only radiographs. Root canal treatment performed by the experimental group showed more accurate results as 75% of students performed adequate quality RCTs whereas in the control groups only 65.31% adequate quality RCTs were performed with a highly significant P-value (P = 0.001). There was a significant association between the quality of obturation with the college of the students. The change in the teaching modalities can result in a more accurate RCT, Quality of obturation in the first RCT was observed as better for students who were trained with ERCLMD during their preclinical training course as compared to the other two groups.