[Forgetfulness of the histology curriculum in medical students]

MEMORY: ability to record, file, classify and later recover of information., essential in processing information and learning, in analogy with a computer. FORGETFULNESS: failure to transfer information from short term memory to long term memory or to recover information from the latter.

to study forgetfulness in contents of Histology in students one and half year after regular course. To evaluate level of re-utilization of contents in second and third year courses. Students with high performance in 2002 (n=26) were evaluated with 20 cytology and histology questions and 20 questions related to organs. 20 multiple choice and 20 brief filled answers were used, expressing the level of usefulness of the contents in Physiology and Physicochemistry, and in the first quarter of Pathology, Microbiology and Pharmacology. The performance of 2002 course was compared with the current test, results of cytology and histology questions versus organs ones and multiple choice answers versus brief filled answers. The loss was in the order of 50% in the recovery of contents (37.07 +/- 1,76 = 92,6% vs. 18,52 +/- 4,33 = 46,3%) without difference between cytology and histology versus organs neither among multiple choice answers versus brief filled answers. The highest usefulness in the contents refers to Pathology (69%) and Physiology (50%) and the lesser to PhysicoChemistry.(7%) We estimate that forgetfulness in our students would have been even higher without the employment of active techniques of learning.