dentist

How dentists can navigate ethical treatment decisions for patients

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An interesting article titled “How to manage the principal-agent problem in dentistry,” appears in the June 2022 edition of the Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA) written by Ben Balev (no. 153, issue 6, pp. 588-589). The article discusses the principal-agent problem, in which the dentist operates as the agent for the patient who is the principal and there is an imbalance of power between the patient and the dentist in decision making. In the dentist-patient relationship, the dentist has specialized knowledge that the patient lacks, and the patient seeks to make up for their lack of knowledge by having the dentist help in oral health decisions. Such a relationship requires that the patient trusts that the dentist functions in their best interest. However, sometime the patient questions the dentists motives behind their treament recommendations. The patient may wonder … Read more

Computer controlled anesthesia for extraction of teeth

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An interesting article titled “Computer-controlled Intraligamentary local anaesthesia in extraction of mandibular primary molars: randomised controlled clinical trial,” appears in the 2022 edition of BMC Oral Health written by Rodaina H. Helmy and et. al. (vol 22, no. 194, pp. 1-10). The article seeks to explore the pain experience when using a computer controlled anethesia injection while extracting lower primary molars in children. To explore the pain experiences of children, 50 healthy children between the ages of 5 and 7, with 29 females, and 21 males, who needed a lower primary molar extractioned were included in the trial. The parents of the children had to consent to inclusion in the trial. Any child who had teeth that showed signs of mobility, acute pathosis, ankylosis, or root resorption affecting more than a third of the root were excluded from the study. … Read more

Orofacial Signs Linked to Lyme Disease

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An interesting article titled “Orofacial Manifestations of Lyme Disease: A systematic review” appears in the The Journal of Dental Hygiene written by Brenda T. Bradshaw and et al. (vol. 95, no. 4, August 2021). The article seeks to perform a systematic review of the types and frequencies of orofacial manifestations of people in the the United States with Lyme disease. In the article the authors performed their systematic review by starting from 217,381 articles that had been searched by a university librarian. The authors weeded these results down substantially due to duplication and to meet their exclusion criteria that included if not with US populations, if not available in English in full text, and if does not have a CDC diagnosis of Lyme disease. This resulted in twelve articles for the analysis with seven from the 1990s, three from the … Read more

Using Artificial Intelligence to Detect Gum Inflammation

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An interesting article titled “Accuracy of Artificial Intelligence-Based Photographic Detection of Gingivitis” appears in the International Dental Journal written by Reinhard Chun Wang Chau and et.al., 2023. The article used artificial intelligence (AI) to provide automated visual plaque control advice based on intraoral photographs. Periodontal disease is a chronic inflammatory disease that is categorised into gingivitis and periodontitis with reversible and irreversible tissue damages. It is beleived to affect mroe than 50% of the world. Periodontal disease is caused by accumulation of plaque biofilm along the gingival margin, which causes local gingival inflammation. As inflammation occurs at the gingival margin, redness, swelling, and loss of stippling appearance as loss of gingival fiber attachment are observed which are changes detected visually by dentists. The study used a deep learning algorithm named DeepLabv3+ built on Keras with TensorFlow to analyze intraoral photographs … Read more

Reducing Anxiety among Pediatric Dental Patients

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An interesting article titled “an Anxiety Reduction Program as an Alternative to General Anesthesia for the Anxious Pediatric Dental Patient” was presented on July 23, 2021, at the virtual session of the 2021 International Association for Dental Research (IADR)/AADR/CADR General Session written by Suher Baker and et al. The research set to investigate the efficacy of a systematic Anxiety Reduction Program (ARP) using progressive desensitization to reduce anxiety in children to a level that would allow dental treatment to be performed in-office without the use of general anesthesia. Dental anxiety has been covered on this site before see for example the post Dental Anxiety and Fear: Impact on Oral Health. Children are more likely to experience an unfavorable and unforeseen incident caused by an error or omission during dental treatment that has negative health consequencies. This is because children do … Read more