This article aims to evaluate the current standards of the postgraduate education in Dental Implantology in the UK by identifying all postgraduate academic qualifications and CPD courses available in the field of Dental Implantology and comparing their core modules against the FGDP (UK) TSID 2016 guidelines.

Completion of specialist training in another field of dentistry, such as oral surgery, periodontology and prosthodontics, is a training pathway for Dental Implantology and would certainly prepare graduate dentists as competent practitioners. However, the authors felt that this pathway does not fit the purpose of this study, and hence, only the academic courses and CPD courses in Dental Implantology were considered.

Initial search for postgraduate academic courses related to Dental Implantology was carried out via Universities and Colleges Admissions Services (UCAS) website in January 2017. During the initial search, it was evident that there was a variation in the titles being used to describe the postgraduate training in Dental Implantology, and hence, several different terms were used to identify all relevant courses. The terms of search included in this study are:

Implantology

Dental Implantology

Implant Dentistry

Clinical Implant Dentistry

Clinical Dentistry (Implantology).

In addition to the courses that were identifiable on the UCAS website, those that were identified through online search engines and professional dental journals were also included in the study.

The CPD courses in Dental Implantology were identified in a similar manner. The primary search was carried out via online search engines in January 2017, and those that were identified from professional dental journals were also included in the study. Any short CPD courses that did not have any practical component or lacking implant placement experience have been excluded from the analysis for this reason.

The core modules of both the identified academic courses CPD courses were compared against the standards specified in TSID 2016 guideline. The main standards from the guideline are listed in Table 1.