Romania is one of the newest member states of the European Union (EU). It has 13 dental schools, 14,841 dentists and 2,935 dental technicians providing oral health care for a population, at 31 December 2014, of 21.3 million. The shift from a communist system to a democratic or capitalist society has contributed to an enormous change in the proportion of public and private sector oral health services. The lack of public funds during the post-communist years has contributed to a dependency on private oral healthcare rather than the government financed public provision. Affordability and social awareness have together established a mixed economy for oral health care costs and oral healthcare is growing slowly compared with other developed EU member states. At the same time, there has been overproduction of new dentists (currently 1500 graduate annually). This has led to un and under-employment and emigration of dentists to other EU member states. This paper explains the current oral healthcare system in Romania and changes in recent years.

This report presents the proceedings of a workshop held in Constanta, Romania on 22 May 2014. During the workshop, representatives from 18 Central and Eastern European countries gave oral presentations on the current oral health of children and young adults aged 16 years and younger. The aim of the workshop was to collect and present data relating to the oral health of children from Central and Eastern European countries and to discuss them in the context of the political changes that have taken place over the last two decades and the recent economic crisis.The presenters had previously completed a series of questions on oral epidemiological studies, prevention of oral disease, treatment and payment, dental personnel, uptake of oral health care and other considerations and structured their presentations on these topics plus the influence of the economic crisis on oral health. It should be remembered that this paper is a report of the proceedings of a workshop and not a study. Ethics approval is not required for workshops.After the 18 oral presentations a 90 min discussion took place during which further points were raised. The presentations, the discussion and the conclusions which were reached are reported in this manuscript.

Background: Evidence concerning periodontal practice in Eastern European countries is scarce. The aim of the present study was to investigate periodontal risk knowledge, patient management and self-perceived confidence among General Dentists (GDs) from five Eastern European regarding their provision of periodontal care. Methods: GDs from Belarus, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova and Romania participated in a questionnaire survey. Power calculations were used to identify the sample size for each country. The structured questionnaire included several domains of inquiry. The socio-demographic domain inquired about dentist's age, gender and years of clinical experience. The dental practice domain inquired about practice location, practising or not practising in a group practice and having or not having a periodontist or a dental hygienist in the practice. The distributions of answers across-countries were compared employing one way ANOVA (comparison of means) or Chi square test (comparison of proportions). For each country, the predictors of the study outcomes: a summative knowledge score for periodontal risks and dentist's confidence level were identified employing either linear or logistic multiple regression models.

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