The dentistry programme at the University of Debrecen, celebrating this year its fortieth anniversary, has come a long ways: even smiles can now be designed with the use of digital technology.
The first dentistry students were admitted in 1976 (previously, general physicians were retrained into dentists), and in the forty years that has since elapsed more than 1200 students graduated from the Hungarian and English-language programmes combined. The conditions of the programme have changed considerably, and the education itself has also gone through major transformations.
“The somewhat harsh infrastructural circumstances four decases ago have been replaced at the Faculty of Dentistry by a level of technical equipment that is unique even in Central European comparison. These days every movement of the students is followed by a computer, which enables us to retrieve earlier work and compare it against the progress made since. One could say that we are training ‘dental engineers’, young people who are able to use state-of-the-art digital technology: taking a digital impression of the patient’s oral cavity, and process the data obtained in three dimensions. This system can help dentists and dental technicians see the images captured by x-ray, the intraoral camera and those taken of the soft tissues at the same time. This allows dentists to design procedures of not only prosthetic but also aesthetic dentistry, including smiles,” says Csaba Hegedűs, dean of the faculty. According to the professor, the special, modern procedures learnt by the students will be part of the daily routine in 10 to 20 years.
The faculty also endeavours to make the latest methods available to practising dentists in Hungary, and therefore, they organized the Debrecen Dental Days for the seventeenth time this year. At the in-service training held this year between 14 and 16 April, nearly five hundred professionals learnt about the most recent techniques is every specialization within the discipline of dentistry from dental surgery to orthodontics. Renowned international experts came to the professional days held in Kölcsey Center from all parts of the world, including the United Kingdom, Greece, Germany, the Czech Republic and Taiwan. The latter was made possible through an intergovernmental grant permitting regular exchanges between the higher education education of the remove island and the University of Debrecen.
Csaba Hegedűs also added: the event allowed leaders of the faculty to meet with the chambers and head physicians of the neighbouring counties, to evaluate the level of preparation of graduates, as well as to consider how they could best facilitate the starting of new graduates in their careers.
unideb.hu
