Taskforce says teledentistry can help improve global oral health

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An interesting article titled “Taskforce backs the benefits of teledentistry to improve global oral care outcomes” appears in BDJ In Practice in 2023 (volume 36, page 8). The article discusses how a task force that has conveyed has concluded that teledentistry has the ability to give millions more people than currently accross the world access to dental services. Teledentistry has been covered before on this site see for example the posts Cosmetic Dentistry in the Era of COVID-19 and Delivering Dentistry and Counseling to Patients using Telemedicine. The article discusses how the taskforce feels that teledentistry can help to improve education, dental referrals, early detection of disease, treatment planning and treatment viability. Teledentistry can be particulary helpful in areas where there is limited access to dental professionals. The taskforce understands that heping to preventive dental disease is the best option and dental professionals … Read more

Cinematic rendering to visualize teeth segmentation

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An interesting article titled “Cinematic rendering to improve visualization of supplementary and ectopic teeth using CT datasets” written by Ines Willershausen and et. al. appears in Dentomaxillofacial Radiology in 2023 (no. 51, 20230058). The article discusses cinematic rendering (CR) which is a visualization technique that uses physically based volume rendering to create photorealistic images from Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) data. Specifically the article attempts to tailor pre-existing CR reconstruction parameters for use in dental imaging to create 3D visualization of ectopic, impacted, and supplementary teeth. This image is from Ines Willershausen and et. al., “Cinematic rendering to improve visualization of supplementary and ectopic teeth using CT datasets,” Dentomaxillofacial Radiology, 2023, no. 51, 20230058 and has a Creative Commons license. 7-year-old girl with a horizontally impacted canine (a) A panoramic radiograph. (b) Semi-transparent reconstruction parameters are utilized to … Read more

Mental health conditions linked to higher oral disease risk

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An interesting study was presented at the 52nd Annual Meeting & Exhibition of the American Association for Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research (AADOCR) that was in conjunction with the 47th Annual Meeting of the CADR in Portland, Oregon on March 17, 2023. The study was conducted by lead author Alex Kalaigian from the University of California, San Francisco School of Dentistry and was part of a talk on “Examining Mental Health and Oral Health: A Nationally Representative Cohort” in a session titled “Psychological Factors for Oral Health.” The study analyzed self-reported data from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study.  The self-reported data had a screener that measured mental health symptoms according to three disorder categorizations: internalizing, externalizing, and substance use and evaulated six oral health outcomes: self-rated oral health, bleeding gums, loose teeth, tooth loss, gum disease, … Read more

Bilateral Inverted and Impacted Wisdom Teeth

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An interesting article titled “Bilateral Inverted and Impacted Mandibular Third Molars: A Rare Case Report” written by Yara Mohamed Talib and et. al appears in Cureus on March 23, 2023 (vol. 15, no. 3, e36573. ). The article discussed two cases of inverted and impacted lower wisdom teeth that is very rare and very few cases have been reported in literature. In the article discussion is made of an impacted wisdom tooth that occurs when the tooth is unable to erupt normally because of a lack of room or a blockage from eruption. When a tooth is in a buccolingual position it is also noted as an inverted impaction. In the article two cases of bilateral impacted lower wisdom tooth were reported along with the radiographs. In the first case a 50 year old woman from Jordan presentned with persistent bleeding … Read more

Is it time to ditch the Doctor of Dental Surgery degree?

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An interesting article titled “Why 2 dental degrees?: Time for unification of degrees and oral health care providers” written by Donald B. Giddon and William V. Giannobile appears in the March 21, 2023 Journal of the American Dental Association. The article calls into question why dentistry is the only major health care profession that has two equivalent degrees: the Doctor of Medicine in Dentistry (DMD) degree and the Doctor of Dental Surgery (DDS) degree. In the article discussion is made of how there is no useful purpose to have two different degrees in dentistry. The authors state that this causes confusion among patients, dentists, and other health care professionals. The authors believe that dentistry should have a single degree, the doctor of dental medicine, which is more accurate to what occurs in dentistry today. The authors say that there are no … Read more