Ongoing Dentistry Research Projects in Kermanshah, Iran

It is an honor and pleasure to serve as the guest editor for the Educational Research in Medical Sciences Journal. I would like to thank the cooperation of vice chancellery for research and technology of Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences that kindly helped us throughout this special issue. Since Kermanshah School of Dentistry has recently initiated its activity, it is necessary to obtain the basic information about the status of knowledge and attitude of academic members, dentists, dental students and carried out therapies in order to perform future planning. To achieve this purpose, the most important considerations are focusing on epidemiologic and community-based surveys to elicit the basic information about the community, which could help to promote future clinical studies and better judgment of effectiveness of pervious dental treatments. So, we aimed to specifically put extensive emphasis on epidemiologic studies in this issue. On the other hand, a well-structured research program for future is essential to provide an appropriate plan. To this end, a critical shifting from descriptive studies to case-control, cohort and clinical trials is needed and should be considered. Cohort studies are so useful in caries and orthodontics research. In dentistry, this type of study can be undertaken to obtain evidence and to report association between cause and effect, particularly through specific population. Clinical trials have been recognized as a reliable scientific method that evaluate the effectiveness of an intervention or try to find better ways to prevent, diagnose or treat diseases. Owing to the newly-established School of Dentistry in Kermanshah, there has not been any registered clinical trial so far. The importance and essential role of these types of studies are undeniable, and as director of research programs of Kermanshah School of Dentistry I encourage faculty members and students of this school to pay more attention to these items. We also may consider evidence-based dentistry (EBD) in all of education. EBD is a new approach that can improve the quality of decision making in clinical practice, so it should be pay more attention and student education must be deigned based on it. It is recommended that School of Dentistry education can employs EBD to prepare better environment for students’ education and this is critically in accordance with early research encounter of students. At the end, I would like to acknowledge and thank the editor-in-chief and referees of this special issue for their excellent work on reviewing the papers, without whose commitment, patients and precision the current special issue could not be published.