| Summary: | The clinical knowledge and skills of dental students attending to different Swedish universities is constantly under discussion. In this study ten students attending their eighth semester at the Department of Odontology, Faculty of Medicine, Umea University Sweden were recruited to evaluate if it would be more challenging to prepare abutment teeth for fixed partial dentures (FPD) with the abutment teeth far apart in the dental arch. Questioning whether it is more difficult to achieve an adequate total convergence angle (TOC) for FPD with abutment teeth closer to each other than one with them further apart. The hypothesis that teeth further apart give a larger TOC. For the experiment the students used dental mannequins with plastic maxillae and plastic teeth provided by the simulation clinic at the university. Their task was to prepare for two separate FPD, one with the abutment teeth 14; 16 and a second 21; 13; 15. After preparation, the teeth were drilled and had metal posts placed in them, the posts representing a normal that the TOC could be measured against. Still photos of the plastic maxillae were taken using the program Shape 3D Viewer. A tangent was drawn to measure the TOC. An adequate TOC for crown retention was considered: 10-22 degrees in both mesio-distal and bucco-palatinal plane axis. The results for the two tested models of FPD were relatively similar, likely because the students got to practice preparation for the shorter and FPD first. In conclusion, this study showed no noteworthy difference between the first and second FPD preparation.
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