Abstract:

BACKGROUND
Undergraduate students, in their teaching education must go through a model of clinical and academic instruction which should allow them to acquire knowledge and, simultaneously, to develop abilities and skills necessary for a good professional practice. Clinical practice with patients is the most important part of education for dental students. However there are considerable difference between lecture, basic practice, and clinical practice.
Current and projected approaches to dental education have created a wide interest in clinical simulation, and recently there has been a considerable expansion in the availability of experiential learning tools which imitate "real life" clinical conditions in dentistry.
A great part of the proximal caries is located in zones of the teeth that only can be diagnosed by X-ray radiographies. The access, in these cases, only can be realized from the oclusal face of the tooth. It will be necessary to eliminate part of healthy dental tissue of the oclusal face with a different hardness from the damaged dental tissue. It has certain difficulty to differentiate these two types of tissues in the phase of learning for the student to realize cavities for composite resins.

OBJECTIVE
To approach a real situation of interproximal caries in artificial teeth set on a typodont model
To develop abilities and skills in dental caries treatment

MATERIAL AND METHOD
We developed and introduced a simple and economic Pre-Clinical Training system using designed artificial teeth with simulated caries.
These artificial teeth are very similar to natural teeth in appearance. Teeth also have caries areas with cavities in the proximal faces of the artificial teeth which are refilled by a soft material used in operative dentistry that is hardened by the dampness.
Teeth used are Frasaco® mounted on the typodont adapted for these teeth. In the first practice it is realized a cavity in the proximal mesial and / or distal face of every teeth with a round carbide tugsteno bur nº H1 018 Brasseler® with low speed. Later it is refilled with Cavit®, a provisional cement, and the whole teeth get in water for 24 hours for the hardening of the material of landfill.
Later, all the teeth with their cavities are screwed on the typodont so that all the interproximal artificial caries created on the teeth remain secret.
In the second practice, the students begin with rotating material with low speed and round tungsten bur, to realize the opening of the cavity they notice a change of hardness of the tooth similar to the interproximal caries of the natural teeth when they realize the clinical practice with patients. From this moment they only have to finish the cavity on the oclusal part without having to penetrate into apical sense.
Later, they clean the filling material of the cavity with hand instrument and do not eliminate any more tooth tissue than the necessary that they removed to have access to the cavity.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS
Undergraduate students:
Use the same rotating and manual instruments as in a true patient case
Notice a change of hardness of the tooth similar to the interproximal caries of the natural teeth
Practice on a simulate interproximal caries model, similar to a clinical situation
This artificial teeth model helps the students to develop abilities and skills for a good professional practice.

Keywords:

competency-based education, education dental, educational measurement, general practice.