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Pilot study shows that career stage influences familiarity and readiness to adopt lithium disilicate restorations among dentists, suggesting training needs vary by age.
(1) Background: This pilot study investigated the influence of career stage on knowledge, perceptions, and readiness to adopt lithium disilicate restorations among 132 dentists from Eastern Europe. (2) Methods: Dentists completed a 24-item questionnaire covering three domains: knowledge and training, clinical perceptions and advantages, and perceived barriers and limitations. These clinicians were grouped into early-career (25–34 years), mid-career (35–50 years), and late-career (>50 years) practitioners. Age-group differences were assessed at both the domain and individual-item levels. (3) The knowledge and training domain exhibited a significant age-dependent gradient (p < 0.001) with a very large effect size (ω2 = 0.45, 95% CI [0.33, 0.55]). This pattern was found for most constituent items (p < 0.001), with the proportion of agreement decreasing significantly with increasing career stage. Translucency evaluation and education adequacy followed a different trend (p < 0.001), with significantly lower agreement in late-career clinicians versus younger groups but no significant differences between these strata. In contrast, composite scores in the remaining domains were comparable across strata. Perceived cost-effectiveness, however, varied significantly across age groups (p < 0.001), reaching its highest levels among mid-career dentists and the lowest among late-career practitioners. Significant intergroup differences were also observed for laboratory communication challenges (p < 0.001), with significantly lower levels reported for later-career dentists. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that career stage substantially influences self-reported familiarity and preparedness regarding lithium disilicate restorations, whereas perceptions of their clinical advantages and limitations remain largely consistent across generations of dentists.
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Sallai et al. (2026) studied this question.
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