Prevalence of electronic cigarette usage among medical students in Saudi Arabia - A systematic review.

The systematic review aimed to report the prevalence of electronic cigarette (e-cigarette) usage among medical students in Saudi Arabia. Electronic databases were searched for scientific research articles published from January 2010 until December 2020. The data search was performed in electronic search engines such as PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science, Medline, Embase, Cochrane, and Saudi Digital Library. A total of five research articles that qualified the eligibility criteria were analyzed for qualitative data. The sample size in the included studies ranged from 229 to 1007 participants. The prevalence of e-cigarette usage ranged from 10.6% to 27.7% among medical students in Saudi Arabia. Studies have also reported that the prevalence of e-cigarette usage is higher among the male population in comparison with the female population. The prevalence of e-cigarette usage among medical students in Saudi Arabia is high. Similar to tobacco smoking, e-cigarette usage is a major public health issue and concern among the younger population because they have potential benefits in some and are harmful to some and also it is still unclear whether they are effective for quitting smoking. Regulatory bodies must focus and initiate strict laws and policies to minimize the sales of these products to the younger population. Health promotion strategies need to be developed to reduce the usage of e-cigarettes.

Prevalence and Pattern of Self-medication with Alternative Medicine: Treatment-switch Analysis in Oral Submucous Fibrosis Patients.

AIM: The aim of this study was to investigate prevalence and pattern of self-medication with alternative medicine (ALM) among oral submucous fibrosis (OSF) patients with emphasis on treatment-switch analysis. METHODS: A total of 115 OSF patients were recruited and subjected to scientifically validated questionnaire. Two groups were identified: S-ALM: patients who have previously received modern medicinal treatment but switched to ALM; and DN-ALM: patients who started ALM from De Novo. RESULTS: A total of 37 (32.18%) patients reported use of the ALM at some point of time. Twenty-five (67.56%) switched to ALM, whereas 12 (32.43%) patients used ALM from De Novo. The pattern of switching to ALM in short period was significantly prevalent in patients with advanced stages (stage III and IV) as compared to early stages (stage I and II) of OSF. Clarified butter, glycerin, and honey were the most commonly used ALM in both the groups. The most common reasons for switching to ALM were the cost of treatment (32.00%), longer duration of medicinal treatment (24.00%) and ineffectiveness of the medications (24.00%). CONCLUSIONS: ALM usage is common in OSMF patients with significant percentage of patient switched from modern medicine to ALM. Therapeutic efficacy of ALM in OSF needs exploration in future.

Development and validation of oral health-related quality of life measure in oral submucous fibrosis.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to develop and assess the validity and reliability of disease-specific oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) instrument for oral submucous fibrosis (OSF). MATERIALS AND METHODS: Items for the OHRQoL-OSF were generated from personal interviews and focus group discussions, the existing questionnaires, reviews of literature and inputs from expert's panel. Item reduction was performed by clinical impact method followed by pretesting of the developed questionnaire. The validity and reliability of the instrument were then examined. RESULTS: Forty-five items were generated from qualitative data and item pooling from various sources. After item reduction, 17 items were finalized with four domain-structure having Eigenvalues greater than 1. OHRQoL-OSF was shown to be valid in distinguishing patients with varying degrees of OSF severity. For the concurrent validity, the observed impact of OSF based on OHRQoL-OSF significantly correlated with Oral Health Impact Profile and global self-ratings of oral health and overall well-being. OHRQoL-OSF and all its domains demonstrated good internal consistency reliability with Cronbach's alpha ˃0.7 and excellent test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.96). CONCLUSION: The first disease-specific OHRQoL-OSF instrument appeared to be highly reliable and valid measure for assessing impact of OSF on life quality.

Extra-vascular type of oral intravascular papillary endothelial hyperplasia (Masson's tumor) of lower lip: a case report and review of the literature.

Intravascular papillary endothelial hyperplasia (IPEH) is an unusual reactive lesion of vascular origin, which rarely occurs in the oral cavity. Pathogenetically, is it divided into true, mixed and extra-vascular types. We report a case of extra-vascular IPEH of the lower lip in 54-year-old female patient. Patient gives history of trauma 4 months back with lesion developing at the site to trauma. The lesion was 3 cm × 4 cm in size with soft to firm in consistency. Histologically, it is characterized by an exuberant papillary endothelial cell proliferation toward the lumen of an enlarged blood vessel from the area of an organizing thrombus. The lesion was surgically excised under local anesthesia. The patient was followed for 1-year with no evidence of recurrence. This paper discusses the various aspects of IPEH of the oral cavity such as pathogenesis, clinical features, histopathology treatment, and prognosis.