Evaluation of Evidence-based Presentations in a Postgraduate Program at a U.S. Dental Institution: A Retrospective Study

The objective of this retrospective study was to appraise the level of evidence of presentations gathered from an electronic repository of an advanced postgraduate program in pediatric dentistry at a single U.S.-based dental institute.

After the ethical approval was obtained, the presentations were assessed, and themes were identified. Using the cited references, the respective level of evidence was collected based on: the year of publication, reference source, choice of journal, journal impact factor, study design, altmetric score of the articles, and h-index of the authors. STATA version 15.1 (College Station, TX, USA) and Microsoft Excel software were used for statistical analysis.

A sum of 690 references between the years 2015 to 2020 have been used in a total of 74 presentations. Presentations related to special health care needs accounted for 29.7% (n= 22) of the total presentations; followed by oral diagnosis/pathology/medicine (n= 17; 23%). The median number of references used in each presentation was eight, and the most common study design was unfiltered. The median number of the first author’s h-index was 25, and the median number of the altmetric score was four.

This study appraised the level of evidence used in resident presentations in a postgraduate program in pediatric dentistry at a U.S. dental institute. The findings of this study could provide useful data to postgraduate program directors who wish to address the level of evidence used in their programs. Additionally, by using the altmetric scores and h-indexes presented in this study, future studies can compare the level of evidence between similar academic institutions or programs.