Pathology for Dental Students (LaMP 5-100) will give you a basic understanding of the causes, mechanisms, and effects of human disease. During the course you will:
1. Build a foundation of basic pathologic principles necessary for understanding oral pathology.
Many of the general pathology concepts we will be discussing in this course (e.g., inflammation, general principles of neoplasia) will be directly applicable to your study of oral pathology next semester.
2. Study a variety of diseases that have manifestations in or around the oral cavity.
Many diseases, such as squamous cell carcinoma, have symptoms and signs in the oral cavity.
Often, a patient’s dentist is the first person to identify these important lesions.
3. Learn about systemic diseases that may impact the health of your patients.
As a dentist, you will encounter many patients with diseases other than those that you are directly treating. A knowledge of the medical implications of these diseases will help you safely manage your patients - and will deepen your understanding of your patients as a whole.
Director
The Course Director is Kristine Krafts, M.D. Please feel free to contact me with questions regarding the course. The best way to reach me outside of class is by email: kkrafts@d.umn.edu. Our office support person is Gail Rosenbaum; you may reach her at rosen018@yahoo.com, or at 625-7622. Our offices are at Mayo D142.
Academic Policy
Scholastic misconduct is defined as any unauthorized act that may (1) give a student an unfair advantage over other students, (2) interfere with the educational pursuits of others, (3) jeopardize the good name and reputation of the School of Dentistry, or (4) place patients under unnecessary risk. These acts may include cheating, plagiarism, misrepresenting one’s own work, or interfering with another student’s work. Please refer to the student handbook for complete details. Scholastic misconduct in any portion of this course will be referred to the Dean’s office at the School of Dentistry and the Committee for Academic Misconduct.
Course Policies
Presence in lectures is expected. Examinations and quizzes must be taken on the stated dates, except in the case of personal hardship or illness. Exceptions must be approved by the director of the course, in which case a comparable test will be administered. Unexcused absences will result in a score of zero for that test.
Grading
There are seven quizzes and four exams in this course.
Quiz Lectures covered Points
1 1 – 7 10
2 8 – 11 10
3 12 – 15 10
4 20 – 26 10
5 27 – 30 10
6 31 – 34 10
7 39 – 44 10
Exam Lectures covered Points
1 1 – 19 85
2 20 – 30 53
3 31 – 38 40
4 39 – 53 75
The two lowest quiz scores will be dropped from each student’s score. The scores of the remaining quizzes and all examinations will be added together to give a single numerical score for the course, and grades will be determined as follows:
A = scores greater than or equal to 90%
B = scores between 80% and 90%
C = scores between 70% and 80%
Students whose scores are less than 70%, or less than two standard deviations below the mean (whichever is lower) will be required to take a remedial examination for the course, which will cover those portion(s) of the course which the student failed: general pathology, systemic pathology, or both. To pass the course, the average of the remedial examination score and the student’s course score must be greater than or equal to 70%. Failing this, the student will be required to retake the course the following year.
Reviews
There are four review sessions in this course, each preceding an exam. These sessions will consist of a review of the preceding lectures, with time allotted for questions about the material. Check out the reviews section of this website for photos and study questions pertaining to each review session.
Textbook
The textbook used in this course is Kumar V, et al (eds): Robbins Basic Pathology, 8th ed., Philadelphia, WB Saunders, 2007. You should use the textbook however it benefits you in order to supplement and reinforce the content you receive in lectures. If you want specific page numbers to go with the lectures, here's a suggested reading list.
Clinical Correlations
In this course, we will be focusing our attention on diseases: their causes, mechanisms, and effects. However, it is important that you also understand how these diseases affect the patient – how the patient may present, how the disease affects the patient’s life, and what general treatment options are available. It has been argued that if dental education included more medical training, dentists would be better prepared to manage medically compromised patients, better able to recognize and address the needs of the whole patient, and more likely to be an integral part of the health care team (Baum BJ. Inadequate training in the biological sciences and medicine for dental students: An impending crisis for dentistry. JADA 138: 16-25, 2007). Accordingly, we have chosen several medical topics for discussion in our course, each of which is frequently cited in the dental literature and described as being particularly relevant to the practice of dentistry. These topics will be addressed by practicing clinical physicians from the University of Minnesota.
