ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Dent. Med.
Sec. Systems Integration
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fdmed.2025.1596610
This article is part of the Research TopicDental EducationView all 10 articles
Retention of Skull Anatomy Knowledge in Dental Education: A Comparative Study
Provisionally accepted- 1University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
- 2Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Nordland, Norway
- 3Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Elverum, Oppland, Norway
- 4Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
There is limited evidence regarding the retention of essential basic science knowledge among dental students and professionals. Understanding the anatomy of the skull, osteology, is crucial as it provides the structural framework essential for comprehending head anatomy, where various soft tissue components are organized. This study aims to evaluate and compare the retention of osteological knowledge across different stages of dental education and professional practice. Specific anatomical structures on selected skull bones and the complete cranium, taught at the pre-clinical level and including clinically and radiographically significant landmarks, were marked for assessment. The study evaluated the ability of second year and fifth year undergraduate dental students, as well as postgraduate students at various stages of specialist training in different dental fields, to independently identify these marked anatomical structures. The study demonstrated significantly higher identification accuracy among second year students compared to fifth year and postgraduate students (p < 0.05). Second year students achieved over 90% accuracy for individual skull bones, with slightly lower accuracy for the entire cranium (85.9%). Fifth year students showed markedly lower retention, with accuracy below 50%, ranging from 20.8% (cranium) to 48.3% (mandible). Postgraduate students performed similarly to fifth year students, notably with only 11.8% accuracy for the sphenoid bone. Significant differences in accuracy were observed among postgraduate specialties (p < 0.05), with oral surgery and oral medicine specialists achieving the highest accuracy (81.2% for the mandible). However, no significant correlation between years of experience and accuracy was observed among the postgraduate groups (p = 0.45). Our results indicate that clinically and radiologically relevant anatomical knowledge is better retained over time, while overall osteological knowledge significantly declines. This highlights the need for strategies beyond initial learning to enhance long-term retention. Integrating clinical, radiological, and surface anatomy into continuing dental education could substantially improve knowledge retention. Furthermore, our findings suggest potential benefits from increased vertical integration and encourage broader discussion regarding the traditional separation between preclinical and clinical training phases.
Keywords: Anatomy, Basic sciences, Cranium, Clinical dentistry, knowledge retention
Received: 19 Mar 2025; Accepted: 26 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Thune, Tostrup Kristensen, Khan, Utheim, Lewi Hammer and Sehic. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Amer Sehic, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.