Dental students' tooth shade selection ability in relation to years of dental education

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Perfect tooth shade selection is indispensable for successful esthetic dental restorations. Shade matching is a complex and multidimensional process that involves the cognitive ability of students. Hence, the aim of the present study was to assess and compare the shade matching ability of undergraduate dental students in various years of dental education. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 150 students enrolled in all five class years of the Bachelor of Dental Surgery course in a dental college in India. Each enrolled participant was presented with two exercises to assess shade matching ability. In the first exercise, basic shade matching ability of the students was assessed by a shade tab matching in a bench setting using Vitapan Classical shade guide. In the second exercise, the participants were asked to perform intraoral tooth color matching to evaluate their ability of shade matching in a clinical setup. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 21 and descriptive statistics were applied. Chi-square test was applied to find out significant differences among years of education. RESULTS: For Exercise 1, 53 participants (35.30%) showed fair color matching ability in bench setting, 26.70% (n = 40) showed good ability, 22.70% (n = 34) demonstrated an excellent ability, whereas 15.30% (n = 23) had a poor ability of color matching. For Exercise 2, where clinical color matching ability of the students was analyzed, 34% (n = 51) obtained fair scores, 33.30% (n = 50) obtained good scores, 26% (n = 39) obtained excellent scores, whereas 6.70% (n = 10) of the participants had poor scores. CONCLUSION: This study showed that the clinical performance of dental students for shade matching improved as the years of dental education increased. Also, better outcomes were seen in clinical setting as compared to in vitro conditions.