Resumo

SILVA, João Marcos Freitas et al. Technical errors in periapical radiographs taken by dental students of a Brazilian public university. Rev. ABENO [online]. 2016, vol.16, n.1, pp. 99-109. ISSN 1679-5954.

We aimed to identify and quantify the errors that dental students of UFES mostly commit when taking periapical radiographs. A total of 352 periapical radiographs was evaluated in this cross-sectional study. The radiographs were collected in the records of patients attended in the University in the last five years. Type of error and academic semester of the course were considered and data were submitted to the Chi-squared test at a significance level of 5%. The results demonstrated a high frequency of errors (84.37%) where the students in the 9th academic semester showed the highest frequency (92.30%) while those in the 8th academic semester had the lowest (70.00%) (p < 0.05). Improper storage (15.60%) was the most frequent error in the sample and it has not been quantified for academic environment in the literature to the best of our science. The other two most frequent errors were: inadequate positioning of the film (14.60%) and low radiographic density (10.60%). We concluded that most of the periapical radiographs taken by the dental students of UFES have errors. Attention should be given to the storage of film-based periapical radiographs in universities.

Palavras-chave : Dental Students; Dental Radiographs; Quality Control.