Self-assessment on evaluating a crown preparation utilizing digital dental technology versus conventional direct supervision

Learning to prepare teeth as dental students requires critical feedback to developing competent skills. Yet, the advice predoctoral dental students receive from various row instructors can be subjective. This creates confusion among students and their ability to learn correctly is ineffective. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness in evaluating crown preparations among 360 predoctoral dental students for self-assessment. An IRB exemption was obtained and an anonymous questionnaire via Qualtrics was sent to the second-year dental students in 2019. The survey evaluated a single crown preparation utilizing the conventional method of a prepared tooth on a typodont versus the digital method of evaluating a scanned preparation utilizing the color metric scale provided by the CEREC Omnicam software 5.1.3 (Dentsply Sirona, USA). Five parameters of a crown preparation were evaluated: occlusal clearance, undercuts, margin integrity, embrasure clearance, and facial plane reduction. The results indicated that dental technology proved to be a more effective method for evaluating crown preparations among dental students for objective learning and self-assessment compared to the conventional techniques under faculty supervision. Based on the results, digital dentistry proves to be more impactful to learning without creating confusion from biased evaluations. With technology advancing rapidly nowadays, dental schools need to stay current and incorporate methods of improving teaching and learning. Furthermore, this dental technology can also be utilized upon graduating dental school. Dentists in private practice may also use the CEREC software 5.1.3 to refine tooth preparations post-color metric analysis to avoid lab limitations when fabricating the crowns.