Materials and methods
EVENTS, GROUP B
The study was conducted on 90 final-year BDS students, after approval by the Research Ethics Committee. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants. A two-part theory lecture of one hour each on fully guided implant planning was delivered to final-year dental students by oral radiology faculty in the month September 2022. The first part of the lecture included the basics of implant planning. It had information on the importance of implant planning, types of implant planning, implant centric view of CBCT, and method of obtaining intraoral scans. In the second part of the lecture, step-by-step procedure of the implant planning was explained to the students using screenshots from the Planmeca software. The Powerpoint presentations were handed over to all the students. Later, they were randomly divided into 3 groups A, B and C. Each group consisted of 30 students. Block Randomization was used to create the allocation list for the three study groups. Randomization sequence was created using Excel 2011 (Microsoft, Redmond, WA, USA) with random block sizes of six and equal allocation ratio by an investigator with no involvement in the trial. The allocation sequence was concealed from the investigators enrolling and assessing participants (students) in sequentially numbered, opaque, sealed, and stapled envelopes. The envelopes were opened at the time of intervention. Group A was exposed to didactic 2-part lectures only. Group B was shown a video for fully guided implant planning in addition to the 2-part didactic lectures they attended within a week. Group C was shown a video for fully guided implant planning in addition to a didactic lecture. Group C additionally performed a hands-on session of virtual implant planning under faculty guidance within one week. (CONSORT flowchart of the methodology followed in the study.The Romexis 6.2.1 version of virtual implant planning software (Planmeca Viso 7 CBCT unit, Finland) was used for the hands-on session. The hands-on session started with mapping of intraoral scan with CBCT. This was followed by mapping of virtual crown with CBCT scan. Then reformatted panoramic curve was made followed by implant selection and placement. This was followed by preparation of virtual surgical guide and comprehensive implant report (Showing the basic steps in virtual implant planning procedure. A-Mapping the intraoral scan with CBCT. B-Mapping of virtual crown with CBCT. C- position the implant using implant centric view. D- preparation of the virtual surgical guide.A week after the didactic lecture, all the students were given an online test of 15 Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) on the topic of fully guided implant planning using Blackboard Ultra (Blackboard Inc, Washington, USA). The MCQs were constructed by two faculties with 10 years of clinical and teaching experience in implant radiology. The MCQs were then revised and validated by another subject expert with similar experience in this field. Among the 15 MCQs, 10 of them were related to the basics (knowledge component, knows) of virtual implant planning. Five MCQs were focused on the sequence of events (procedural component, knows how) in the virtual implant planning (The discrimination index and difficulty level of the MCQ items were analyzed using blackboard analytics. According to blackboard analytics the scales of the discrimination values range from −1.0 to + 1.0. Values above 0.30 is good, whereas values between 0.10 and 0.30 are fair. The question is considered to be a poor discriminator if the values range from −1.0 to 0.10. Discrimination cannot be ascertained when a question has difficulty score of 100% or all students get same score on a particular question [The student scores were compared between the three groups using statistical tests. Students from groups A and B were then given hands-on training in fully guided implant planning. Finally, students from all three groups (A, B and C) were asked to fill out a questionnaire regarding their satisfaction levels with fully guided implant planning. The questionnaire used for the study was adapted from the study by Lu et al [