Knowledge of stem cells among Dentistry undergraduates

Stem cells (SCs) enabled great advances in differenthealth fields, including Dentistry. Objective: To investigate theknowledge of last year Dentistry undergraduate students regardingSCs and its applications. Material and methods: A questionnairewith open-ended questions was applied to the students, followedby qualitative-quantitative analysis involving the clustering of theanswers. Results: The majority of students (70%) defined SCsadequately, only half of the interviewees (48.8%) were unable toclassify SCs and just 26.2% classified it correctly. On the questionabout SCs from dental tissues, 77.5% reported it was possibleand 70.9% knew which tissues could be used. The main sourceof knowledge was the media (36.4%), followed by the University(26.6%); 88.5% stated that the topic was only addressed in the firstyear of the course. Consequently, only 7.5% reported being capableof answering questions about it. Conclusion: The students are notreceiving enough information about the topic.