Oral pathology in the dental curriculum: a guide on what to teach.

There has been considerable disagreement among educators on the topics and details of topics that should be included in the teaching of oral pathology to dental students and graduate students in dental specialties. Various authorities have recommended core curricula that range from comprehensive teaching of eighteen categories, each with up to nine subheadings, covering hundreds of entities, to as few as approximately fifty of the most common lesions that affect the oral and maxillofacial region. This article offers a curriculum planning model designed to help faculty make decisions about course content and emphases. The model allows instructors to assess content relevance and priority based on three criteria: 1) commonness, 2) uniqueness, and 3) significance of diseases and conditions. The product of this decision-making process is a relevance score that can serve as a guideline for the choice and details of topics to be included in oral pathology courses.