ABSTRACT
Background. Coronavirus disease has subjected the whole of humanity to two years of social isolation and a series of restrictions. These circumstances have led to the use of information technology in an increasingly widespread manner. Even in the dental field, telematic means have been used to respond to emergencies. The aim of this systematic review of the literature is to evaluate the types of orthodontic emergency that occurred most often and how they were managed by teleorthodontics during the COVID-19 pandemic. The secondary aim is that clinicians will use teleorthodontics not only during pandemics but as an additional tool to manage orthodontics. Materials and Methods. Out of 1695 articles available on PubMed, Science Direct, Cochrane and SciELO, eight articles were selected for this systematic literature review. Google Scholar was used as a secondary source to confirm that there were no additional articles. The screened papers comprised editorials, clinical studies, cross-sectional studies and retrospective studies in Italian, English or Spanish language. Results. The articles showed that the means by which patients most often communicated with their orthodontists were voice calls and smartphone applications such as WhatsApp® Messenger. Through these media, patients communicated their orthodontic emergencies. These mainly involved fixed multibracket appliances and the most common issues were discomfort and pain, fracture or loss of the appliance, protruding distal ends of archwires, brackets, tubes and bands or retainer detachment. Through teleorthodontics, patients could solve these issues by using orthodontic relief wax, cutting the protruding distal ends of the archwire with a nail clipper or a stronger cutter and removing or replacing detached bands, brackets, tubes or metallic ligature with a clean tweezer. Conclusions. In situations where personal contact is limited, teleorthodontics represents a valuable aid for professionals and patients facing orthodontic emergencies. The hope is that it may continue to represent a valuable aid for patients with difficulties in planning an in-office visit.
ABSTRACT
Aim: To examine the human exposure to perchlorate, nitrate, and thiocyanate, and their associations with oral pain (OP) in the general population from the U.S. Methods: A total of 13,554 participants were enrolled in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. The urinary perchlorate, nitrate, and thiocyanate were measured using ion chromatography coupled with an electrospray tandem mass spectrometry. The multivariable linear and logistic regressions were performed to explore the associations of the urinary perchlorate, nitrate, and thiocyanate, with the prevalence of oral pain. Restricted cubic splines were used to explore the non-linearity. Results: There are 3,129 OP cases. There was a higher urinary level of perchlorate, nitrate, and thiocyanate in OP. We found that urinary thiocyanate was positively associated with OP (odds ratio [OR] = 1.06; [1, 1.13]; p = 0.049). Restricted cubic spines revealed that urinary thiocyanate was in a U-shape association with OP. Conclusions: Urinary thiocyanate was in a U-shape association with OP, suggesting that we should keep the exposure of thiocyanate under a reasonable range.