Implant dentistry has become a predictable treatment to restore esthetics, form and oral function. The placement and restoration of dental implants has increased significantly worldwide. Therefore, the need to provide implant education to dental students is paramount. The purpose of this paper was to describe the journey of implant programs at dental schools on several continents. Implant treatment varies from country to country and continent to continent. From this review, it appears that predoctoral implant programs in North America (US) have a more structured curriculum (preclinical and clinical). The students in these programs provide more treatment modalities compared to other parts of the world. A substantial effort is needed to improve the implant curriculum for dental students in Asia, where the majority of the world’s population is located.
In 1998, the symposium ‘Towards optimized treatment outcomes for Dental Implants’ held in Toronto initiated a significant promotion of the field of implant dentistry in daily practice to rehabilitate partially dentate and completely edentulous jaws. Over the past three decades, the discipline of implant dentistry has matured significantly, and education has reached the levels of predoctoral, post-graduate and continuing education for established practitioners.
Dental students are expected to mature into competent and skillful dental practitioners. Thus, it is essential that predoctoral education follows the pace of innovation and stays well attuned to everyday professional practice (Frank et al. 2010). We expect that future dental professionals will possess certain competencies within implant dentistry, such as being able to identify indications, provide patients with current and correct information and refer to specialists, or that they can treat patients on their own within their range of competencies (Koole et al. 2014). At this point in time, treatment modalities for the replacement of one or several missing teeth with implant-supported restorations has become a ‘standard of care’ procedure.
Over the past 20 years, there have been some improvements at the predoctoral level of education, but for various reasons the recommendations from various Consensus meetings have not been implemented. This article will illustrate the differences between dental schools around the world in terms of their challenge to integrate implant dentistry into the established curriculum.
A competency statement regarding predoctoral implant education has been established in some regions (Table 1).