Live surgery in continuing implantology education

Dental Tribune International

Wed. 30. July 2025

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GUANGZHOU, China: While live surgery demonstrations have been a popular and effective educational tool across all facets of the medical field for decades, little is known about their efficacy and reception in the context of education in dental implantology. Seeking to address this knowledge gap, a research team based at the Hospital of Stomatology at Sun Yat-sen University in Ghangzhou have recently undertaken a survey of their own continuing education courses to assess to what extent their participants benefited from them. Their findings demonstrate unequivocally that continuing education courses with a live surgical component are both better received and more effective.

The continuing education courses at the university commenced in 2019 and have included live surgery demonstrations since 2022. To determine the acceptance and practical value of the courses that included this live element, the research team undertook a retrospective survey of 125 participating dentists from across the entire time frame. Of these, 65 had attended the traditional courses without live demonstration between 2019 and 2021, and 60 had participated in the courses with live demonstration between 2022 and 2024.

The survey assessed the dentists’ overall satisfaction with the course, their evaluation of surgical live demonstration methods, their interest in course topics and content, and their personal viewpoint concerning the dental implantology course after the continuing education courses. The survey scores of those who had attended the courses before live surgery was included averaged just over 3.5 out of 5, indicating generally positive—but not enthusiastic—responses. For those participants who had experienced the live surgery format, every item scored above 4.5, reflecting high acceptance and marked satisfaction regarding the format across the board.

The sharp rise in scores suggests that the live surgery approach significantly elevated participants’ perceptions of the educational value of the courses. Respondents agreed strongly on all measured metrics—suggesting high approval regarding content delivery, practical relevance and teaching quality. Essentially, the study reports a complete consensus in favour of the methodology post-intervention. The participants in live surgical courses gave higher scores regarding enhanced foundational knowledge in implantology, self-reported adherence to aseptic protocols, compliance with surgical procedures and improved clinical implant treatment proficiency.

Although the study reported limited details on specific subdomains, the overall transformation—from the modest pre-course sentiment to resounding endorsement of the live demonstrations—underscores the potential impact of immersive, real-time procedural teaching in postgraduate dental education. The study positions live surgery modules not just as engaging but as demonstrably more effective in winning participant approval than traditional formats. While live demonstrations thus possess an intrinsic pedagogical value, it should also be kept in mind that recent research from both Jordan and Saudi Arabia shows that they might not necessarily displace existing techniques such as video recordings but rather complement them.

The study, titled “Evaluation of live surgery continuing education course in implantology for dentists: A retrospective cross-sectional survey”, was published online on 18 July 2025 in BMC Medical Education.

Topics:

Dental Implantology

Tags:

Continuing education Dental education Dental implantology Dental research Live surgery

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