Maintaining dental implants - do general dental practitioners have the necessary knowledge?

Objective The aim of this study was to understand the opinion of general dental practitioners about the current level of implant education at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.Materials and methods A questionnaire was sent to the general dental practitioners working in a group of practices in the West Midlands, UK. The completed responses were analysed.Results Ninety-one out of 101 dentists responded to the questionnaires (95.6%). Sixty-seven (77%) dentists stated that they learnt only theoretical aspects of dental implants during their undergraduate training. The majority of them stated that the training they received was not adequate. In addition, few barriers in dental implant provision by general dentists were also identified in the survey. The main barriers were risk of failures (56.3%), to avoid complications (65.5%) and the cost of learning (51.7%). The results were correlated to the implant competences set by the regulatory organisations such as General Dental Council and Association of Dental Education Europe.Conclusion The present study confirmed that the current implant education at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels in the UK does not instil confidence to the GDPs to provide and maintain dental implants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]