Perceptions regarding the use of a three-dimensionally-printed manufactured educational simulator for periodontal treatment of intraosseous and interradicular lesions.

Purpose/objectives: Treating intraosseous lesions (IOLs) and interradicular bone lesions (IRLs) is an extremely technical dental procedure in periodontics. Instrumentation of these lesions is often perceived as difficult by students and inexperienced dentists before they perform a certain number of procedures on patients in the clinic. The aim of this article is to evaluate a cost-effective three-dimensional (3D)-printed educational simulator for the periodontal treatment of IOLs/IRLs (including scaling, incisions and sutures).

Methods: The simulators were first developed digitally, and then manufactured using printable resins and specific materials; finally, they were assembled using different bonding systems. To evaluate the simulators, assessments were gathered from two target populations: undergraduate students and periodontics experts. These individuals tested the simulator and completed a cross-sectional questionnaire based on a Likert scale with comparative and pedagogical items scored from one to five. The purpose of the questionnaire was to compare our simulator to clinical reality (i.e., operation on human jaws) and to an animal simulator (i.e., simulation of porcine jaws). The results are expressed as the mean and standard deviation and were statistically analyzed with the Wilcoxon signed-rank test.

Results: Overall, the results were satisfactory for both groups of testers (4.70 and 4.61 out of five for students and experts, respectively, for global satisfaction).

Conclusions: The overall educational relevance of the simulator designed herein highlights the fact that 3D-printed educational simulators could enable efficient cognitive-functional learning for clinical IOL/IRL treatment.