dentist

Using Imaging to Help Treat a Fused Wisdom Tooth

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An interesting article titled “Endodontic Management of a Fused Mandibular Third Molar with Supernumerary Tooth Using Cone-Beam Computed Tomography: A Case Report” appears in the American Journal of Case Reports written by W. Almutairi and M. Alduraibi (2022; 23: e937224). The article discusses a case report of a 26 year old man that had a wisdom tooth fused with with a supernumerary tooth. In the article discussion is made of the 26 year old man man with good oral hygiene who arrived at the author’s college in Saudia Arabia after having two days of severe pain on his lower jaw. An exam showed a large, mesially tilted, irregular wisdom tooth fused with a fourth molar. The fused tooth was tender to touch and responded to pain when a cold stimulus was used. The clinical findings suggested symptomatic irreversible pulpitis with … Read more

Over half of patients say dentists fail to screen for health risks

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An interesting article titled “Patients’ comfort with and receipt of health risk assessments during routine dental visits: Results from the South Atlantic region of the US National Dental Practice-Based Research Network” written by Y. Guo and et. al. appears in the Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiololgy (vol. 00, pp. 1–10, 2022). In the article the authors seek to better determine the comfort level patients have with with health risk assessments (HRAs) and ascertain factors associated with the provision of HRAs. In the article, the authors conducted a cross-sectional study of 30 actively licensed dentists that were recruited out of 469 dentists in the South Atlantic Region of the US National Dental PBRN and recruited 30 patients each seen between January and March 2018. Each patient was asked to complete a questionnaire before and after their dental visit. The pre-questionnaire consisted … Read more

Pediatric Dentists Can Benefit from Improving their Image Interpretation Skills

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An interesting study titled “Does clinical experience with dental traumatology impact 2D and 3D radiodiagnostic performance in paediatric dentists? An exploratory study” appears in the BMC Oral Health written by Gertrude Van Gorp and et al. (vol. 22, no. 245, 2022). The article seeks to explore the performance of pediatric dentists when identifying and detecting traumatic dental injuries on both 2D and 3D images. In the study the authors analyzed data from nine pediatric dentists (six female and three male) who had used structured scoring sheets to randomly assess 2D and 3D images of anterior permanent teeth with dental trauma. The researchers analyzed the level of experience with traumatic dental injuries on imaging, identification, and interpretation of lesions. The authors compared these results to benchmark data from expert consensus of an experienced dentomaxillofacial radiologist and pediatric endodontist. Six of of … Read more

Numb chin syndrome: what dentists should know

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An interesting article titled “Numb chin syndrome: What all oral health care professionals should know,” written by Christina Perez and et al. appears in the Journal of the American Dental Association (published May 26, 2022). The article discusses the rare sensory neuropathy of the mental nerve called numb chin syndrome (NCS) and to inform oral health professionals and dentists of the clinical characteristics since they may be the first to encounter it in their patients. In the article the authors found a total of 2,374 studies in PubMed and the Cochrane Library. Based on the authors inclusion and exclusion criteria 102 articles were left. From these 102 articles, 8 studies were observational, 85 were case reports, and nine were letters to the editor. The articles included 288 patients which the authors performed descriptive statistics on. This resulted in numb chin … Read more

Rare abscess in chewing muscle after wisdom tooth extraction

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An interesting article titled “A Rare Infratemporal Fossa Abscess of the Lateral Pterygoid” appears in Cureus written by B.S. Daines, R. Varman, and J. Cordero (May 27, 2022, vol. 14, no. 5, pp. e25391). The article discusses how a 26 year old man developed an infratemporal fossa abscess in the lateral pterygoid, a masticatory muscle used for chewing, after having a wisdom tooth extraction. The article discusses how the 26 year old man developed facial swelling after having two upper wisdom teeth extracted. He presented with facial swelling on his left side which was accompanied by constant and dull pain localized to the left face with radiation to the left temple and made worse when he opened his jaw. The man also had a low grade fever and his symptoms persisted even with taking oral amoxicillin for one week and … Read more