Department of Periodontics and Preventive Dentistry: Curriculum
The didactic teaching goal of the Department of Periodontics and Preventive Dentistry is to work within the revising curriculum of the School of Dental Medicine to create an awareness of periodontal dentistry as dental medicine where prevention can be practiced. Periodontists believe that personal good oral hygiene behaviors can be taught to individuals and promoted to age-specific and social groups through oral health education. Periodontal medicine also perceives good oral health as an open gateway to good general systemic health and documents the many links to general systemic health that are affected by the destructive presence of inflammation and oral infection from bacteria. The discipline of periodontal medicine practices clinical surgical and non-surgical techniques that bring a patient to a therapeutically acceptable level of host modulation by initiating current best periodontal treatment practices---right diagnosis, right treatment plan, and conservative but appropriate step-wise active therapeutic strategy tailored on a case-by-case basis.
The first- and fourth-year didactic courses of the First Professional Program's are currently being revised by the Curriculum Committee of the School of Dental Medicine. The second-year and third-year didactic and clinical periodontics curricula remain intense, focused, periodontics discipline-specific instructional experiences in the science of oral health, infection, and inflammation, and the clinical periodontal treatment procedures and modalities (scaling and root-planing, hard- and soft-tissue surgeries, gingivectomy, flap surgeries, furcation involvement, combined periodontal-endodontic therapies).
PERIO 5211 Periodontology I is designed to introduce the basic concepts of periodontics to the student dentist. Clinical normals are presented and contrasted to disease entities of the periodontium. Clinical diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of periodontal diseases are presented in a science-based format.
PERIO 5242 Periodontology II is a continuation of Periodontology I. It is designed to introduce the basic concepts of periodontics to the student dentist. This course emphasizes clinical parameters, observations, and procedures in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of periodontal diseases. The introduction of clinical procedures relative to periodontal therapy (comprehensive periodontal examination, prophylaxis, and root planing) is accomplished in this course through the use of SIM lab experiences and follows the evidence-based principles presented in Periodontology I.
PERIO 5313 Periodontology III is an introduction to the clinical, surgical, and interdisciplinary aspects of periodontal therapy along with supportive periodontal treatment.
Third-year Periodontics Periodontology III is accompanied by two sections of clinical periodontics instruction, PERIO 5319 Clinical Periodontology 2 and PERIO 5349 Clinical Periodontology 3. These are the periodontics-faculty-supervised sessions of performance and instruction in clinical dentistry carried out by third-year predoctoral students on the volunteer patients in the School of Dental Medicine Module Clinics. Licensed periodontists supervise all procedures and instruct at the same time. Periodontics instructors in the Modules are full-time and part-time periodontics faculty and the residents in periodontics. The course director for all didactic third-year periodontics is Dr. Ali Seyedain.
Clinical performance and instruction continues in the modules for fourth-year predoctoral students in the courses PERIO 5419 Clinical Periodontology 5 and PERIO 5449 Clinical Periodontology 6. Dental student periodontal instruction and performance in the modules is all under the direction of Dr. Ali Seyedain as well.
Dr. Pouran Famili offers PERIO SELECTIVE for fourth-year predoctoral students who have completed all periodontics clinical requirements and who want to expand their basic didactic knowledge of periodontics. This very small number of students are given the option of performing select cases of advanced periodontal surgery and working closely on cases with the periodontal residents. Dr. Famili is course director and interested dental students must ask for her advance permission to enroll. The department also offers independent-study sections by permission that make opportunities for dental students to carry out projects in clinical research in oral health mentored by Dr. Famili.