[Evaluation of the dental students' knowledge on HIV infection. Analysis before and after an informative lecture]

The knowledge about HIV infection and AIDS is essential to the dentist. So they should be prepared in the use of measures of cross infection control. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the general and specific knowledge about HIV infection, of the dental students before and after an informative lecture on the subject. In the first stage of the evaluation 160 questionnaires, were given to the students. In the second stage, 3 months later, they went to a 15 minutes lecture about the HIV infection, afterwards another 160 questionnaires were given to the same students. In the questionnaires filled before the lecture the total success index was of 49% and of mistakes was 45.9%. After the lecture those values were 54.4% and 40.8% respectively. We concluded that even after the informative lecture the students presented a high mistake index and little assimilation of the subject, indicating that just 15 minutes of lecture was insufficient for a subject of great importance. The graduation dental students need more information on the HIV infection as well as up to date informative aspects.