Final year is bittersweet to say the least. It is a time when you are at the crux of entering professional life whilst waving goodbye to carefree student years. It is thus very natural to feel lost and all over the place. Try to prioritize skill-building during quota hours. Gather tips and tricks from your seniors and aim for hands-on practice. This will benefit you immensely during the coming year - your housejob. But don't forget to partake in college events and activities because trust me, you will miss even the most boring ones once you've graduated. Final year is all about finding the right balance of things.
As far as my experience of tackling final year exams goes, here are some guidelines:
Orthodontics
Ortho is the subject for you if you aim to drastically change your patient's lives as a dentist. It is all about grasping the basics, the rest takes care of itself. I initially started from profitt but personally found the knowledge to be too scattered, moved to balaji for mind mapping of the subject. It is a concise book and sorted according to our TOS. Once you get the idea of things, you can turn to profitt for extra pieces of information especially tables and diagrams. Some chapters like anchorage and retention are especially recommended to be read from profitt.
PSA: You might want to double check anything with values from profitt.
The Ulfat bashir notes have really detailed explanation of cephalometrics, that's where most of us did that from. In addition we saw youtube videos for cephalometric analysis on our seniors channel bookology.
Make sure to practice wire bending and cephalometric analysis properly during quota hours. They are an easy area to score marks during practicals. Vivas are generally simpler with orthodontics, focus areas usually being Retention, Relapse, Anchorage and Appliances. The professors love appliances, especially the activator for some reason.
Prosthodontics
I personally loved the theoretical part of prostho and hated the practice equally. But the contentment of seeing a patient smile once they have a functional dentition is definitely priceless.
1) For the RPD portion we used McCracken, focusing mainly on:
• Classification of edentulous arches
• all components of the RPD
• biomechanics
• design principles
• surveying
• distal extension bases
The remaining chapters can be skimmed for important points or prepared via slides and past papers.
Make sure you know by heart all of the indications for different types of retainers and major connectors. These are some of the most asked questions in vivas aswell as mcqs.
2) For CD we were suggested to do the tables in boucher as they summarize most if not all of the writing material + slides provided by the professor.
Some areas of focus for CD are:
• Occlusion!! types, definitions, everything you can think of. This is always a pet question in both exams and vivas.
• immediate, copy, intermediate, spoon and every dentures are some of the most sought out topics in CD. Make sure to have clear concepts of their indications and contraindications.
• Selection and arrangement of artificial teeth and various theories related to these.
• Natural vs artificial dentition
• Articulators! Types, indications, working principles.
A general focus area for prosthodontics is various effects and phenomenon namely the L beam effect, snowshoe effect, Christensen phenomenon etc. They are asked about alot!
Operative
Operative is definitely the troublemaker of final year subjects mainly because of the many different books that cover it.
The recommended book for operative is art and science, focus mainly on caries, enamel and dentin adhesion, amalgam and composite restorations. The principles of cavity preparation are essentially the same for various restorations with subtle differences. Make sure to highlight these.
For Endo Grossman is the recommended book. It is an extensive book especially considering the limited time to cover all of overative before prof, so focus mainly on: •pulpal and radicular pathologies
•important endodontic techniques like direct and indirect pulp capping, apexogenesis, apexification, regenerative endo and RCT techniques, steps and instrumentation.
Paeds can be covered from notes and slides, most of it is similar to endo with minor differences in paediatric patients.
The recommended book for Crown and bridge is Smith. You can skim important topics like various types of crowns and bridges, their indications and contraindications aswell as different prepping values for metal, PFM and all ceramic crowns. Some students also prefer Rosential for CnB so go for that if it works for you!
Surgery
Surgery is mainly covered from Tucker, it is an amazing book with well illustrated diagrams.
The chapters on maxillofacial trauma can be covered more extensively from Neelima because of their exam weightage.
LA has to be done from Malamed focusing mainly on armamentarium and the maxillary and mandibular LA techniques especially the PSA and IANB + depths and volumes of the injections.
Make sure to have a strong understanding of the management of dental emergencies+dosage values of LA for the practical exam.