Basic science teaching in dentistry in Central/Eastern Europe. Towards harmonisation?

The present study was carried out to examine basic science teaching in dentistry in Central/Eastern Europe, and compare the situation with the EU. In order to collect the necessary data, a questionnaire has been sent to 25 dental schools of the region and 14 schools from 8 countries responded. According to the data obtained, the number of hours devoted to basic sciences and medical clinical sciences together are 2206 in Central/Eastern Europe, and 1416 in the EU. In the case of dental clinical subjects, the difference in the number of hours is just the opposite, much higher in the EU. Thus, for the Central‐European region there are two real alternative ways of convergence to western Europe. One option is to decrease the level of basic science and medical science teaching and use the free capacity to increase the weight of dental clinical subjects in the curriculum. The other option is to leave the subjects that are at high levels as they are, and increase significantly the number of hours of the whole curriculum. It seems important to promote the convergence between Central/Eastern Europe and the EU. The EU has to define the trends of the next few decades and the Central/Eastern European countries should converge in this direction.