Evaluation of Eye Safety Protocol in the Dental Office.

Background: Ocular health is significant as undetected and untreated eye conditions can lead to vision loss and blindness. Usually, dentists, dental assisting staff, and patients undergoing frequent dental corrections are likely affected by eye injuries. Methods: This survey aimed to evaluate eye safety protocols in the dental fraternity. A prevalidated questionnaire was given to practicing graduate and postgraduate dentists to obtain details of the eye safety protocol they adopted. Results: A total of 150 dentists approached; only 125 chose to participate in the survey and answered our questionnaire. Although most dentists used eye protection for themselves, primarily personal eyeglasses and face shields, eye injury was quite common in them. Conclusion: Data from this study revealed that the use of eye safety practices among the respondents could be improved. Clinicians should be aware that they are responsible for providing adequate eye protection for themselves and their assisting staff and patients.

An Overview of Psychological Analysis of Breast Cancer Patients undergoing Modified Radical Mastectomy and Breast Conservation Surgery and its impact on Objectified Body Consciousness at a Tertiary Care Cancer Centre in South India.

BACKGROUND: Breast cancer is the most common cancer among females, and surgery plays a central role in its treatment. Surgical treatments may have a negative psychological impact on women's mental health regarding their body image. The purpose of this study was to compare the psychological health insights pertaining to objectified body consciousness scores before and after the surgery and also to observe whether these scores were comparable across the surgery types. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This retrospective analysis of prospectively maintained data included 706 breast carcinoma patients who underwent either Breast Conservation Surgery or Modified Radical Mastectomy at tertiary care Cancer Centre, between the years 2020 to 2021. A validated questionnaire of Objectified Body Consciousness was used to obtain responses at diagnosis and at 6 months postsurgery and final scores were calculated for both instances. Two sample t-tests/analysis of variance and Chi-square tests were used to compare continuous and categorical variables respectively. RESULTS: Out of total 706 breast cancer patients, 402 patients underwent Breast Conservation Surgery and 304 underwent Modified radical mastectomy procedure. A statistically significant change was seen in the mean Objectified Body Consciousness Score (14.22 ± 15.44) for all patients when compared preoperatively(72.72 ± 11.38) and postoperatively(60.15 ± 17.58). This change was higher in the Modified Radical Mastectomy group(29.38 ± 11.53). Also, statistically significant rise in scores was seen with increasing age. CONCLUSION: We could affirmatively conclude in our study that younger breast cancer patients and all patients who underwent a Modified Radical Mastectomy, had more psychological apprehension with the body image postsurgery, signifying these groups should be encouraged by healthcare professionals to reach out for counselling at the earliest.

Assessment of common errors and subjective quality of digital panoramic radiographs in dental institution, Riyadh.

Aim: The study aims to determine the frequency of positioning errors, record the number of diagnostically inappropriate images, and assess the quality of panoramic radiographs. Materials and Methods: In this study, a total of 2629 patients for whom orthopantomogram were selected out of 3900 new patients between August 2020 and June 2021. The positioning errors of the radiographs were evaluated and categorized into ten groups. The quality of the radiographs is further assessed as "Excellent," "Diagnostically Acceptable," and "Diagnostically Unacceptable." Results: Out of the total radiographs, 32.8% had no errors, and 77.2% of the radiographs had one or more positioning errors. The radiographs were analyzed in detail, and the errors found in the panoramic radiographs were recorded. The most common positioning error observed in the radiograph was error 8, failure to place the tongue close to the palate. Conclusion: The results and evaluation inferred that attention to patient positioning and focusing on reducing diagnostically indecent images could improve the quality of panoramic radiographs. Proper instructions to the patient, patient preparation, appropriate positioning of the patient, and the technician's skill plays a vital role in reducing diagnostic errors in Panoramic Radiography.

Résumé Objectif: L'étude vise à déterminer la fréquence des erreurs de positionnement, à enregistrer le nombre d'images diagnostiques inappropriées et à évaluer la qualité des radiographies panoramiques. qualité des radiographies panoramiques. Matériaux et méthodes: Dans cette étude, un total de 2629 patients pour lesquels l'orthopantomogramme a été sélectionné. sur 3900 nouveaux patients entre août 2020 et juin 2021. Les erreurs de positionnement des radiographies ont été évaluées et classées en dix groupes. La qualité des radiographies est ensuite évaluée comme "Excellente", "Diagnostiquement acceptable" et "Diagnostiquement inacceptable". Résultats: Sur l'ensemble des radiographies, 32,8 % ne présentaient aucune erreur, et 77,2 % des radiographies présentaient une ou plusieurs erreurs de positionnement. Les radiographies ont été analysées en détail, et les erreurs trouvées dans les radiographies panoramiques ont été enregistrées. L'erreur de positionnement la plus courante observée sur l'erreur 8, à savoir le fait de ne pas placer la langue près du palais. Conclusion: Les résultats et l'évaluation ont permis de déduire que l'attention portée au positionnement du patient et la réduction des images indécentes sur le plan diagnostique peuvent améliorer la qualité des radiographies panoramiques. Une bonne communication avec le patient, le technicien passant plus de temps à positionner le patient et la compétence du technicien sont les clés du contrôle et de la réduction des erreurs de diagnostic dans les radiographies panoramiques. et la réduction des erreurs de diagnostic en radiographie panoramique Mots clés: Artefacts, images fantômes, panoramiques, radiographies.

Concise Synthesis of 1,1-Diarylvinyl Sulfones and Investigations on their Antiproliferative Activity via Tubulin Inhibition.

BACKGROUND: Discovery of small molecules that inhibit tubulin polymerization is an attractive strategy for the development of new and improved anti-proliferative agents. OBJECTIVE: A series of novel 2-sulfonyl-1,1-diarylethenes were designed towards this end keeping in view the favorable chemical and pharmacological virtues of unsaturated sulfones. METHODS: Rapid, convenient and efficient two-step assembly of the designed molecules was achieved by the vicinal iodo-sulfonylation-Suzuki coupling sequence. RESULTS: As hypothesized, these compounds showed good anti-proliferative activity against different tissuespecific cancer cell lines: MCF-7, DU-145, A-549, HepG2, and HeLa. The most active compound, pnitrophenyl ring-bearing analog, exhibited an IC50 value of 0.90µM against A-549 cells. Flow cytometry studies on this derivative revealed that it arrests the cell cycle of A-549 cells at the G2/M phase. This compound exhibited molecular binding to tubulin as well as tubulin polymerization inhibition comparable to that of colchicine. CONCLUSION: A new class of potent, tubulin binding anticancer agents based on 1,1,-diarylvinyl sulfone scaffold has been designed and synthesized.

Insight into verruciform xanthoma with oral submucous fibrosis: Case report and review of literature.

Verruciform xanthoma (VX) is a rare benign mucocutaneous verrucopapillary lesion, which mainly involves masticatory mucosa and gingiva. Clinically, it presents as a solitary, sessile or pedunculated, white- or yellow-white-colored growth with a pebbled surface, hence often misdiagnosed as papilloma. The hallmark of histological diagnosis is the presence of foam cells or xanthoma cells confined to the connective tissue papillae. We present a case of VX on the maxillary gingiva in a 52-year-old male patient with oral submucous fibrosis (OSF) with a review on histopathology and concomitant oral lesions. The exact etiopathogenesis is not clearly delineated more so when it is associated with diverse local and systemic conditions. Its concomitant association with other conditions such as lichen planus, leukoplakia, oral squamous cell carcinoma and OSF is rare, with only three cases of VX associated with OSF reported earlier.

Virtopsy: Touch-free autopsy.

The word "autopsy" denotes "to see with own eyes." Autopsy (postmortem) is a process that includes a thorough examination of a corpse noting everything related to anatomization, surface wounds, histological and culture studies. Virtopsy is a term extracted from two words "virtual" and "autopsy." It employs imaging methods that are routinely used in clinical medicine such as computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging in the field of autopsy, to find the reason for death. Virtopsy is a multi-disciplinary technology that combines forensic medicine and pathology, roentgenology, computer graphics, biomechanics, and physics. It is rapidly gaining importance in the field of forensics. This approach has been recently used by forensic odontologists, but yet to make its own mark in the field. This article mainly deals with "virtopsy" where in various articles were web searched, relevant data was selected, extracted, and summarized here.

The role of oral physicians in predicting the risk of obstructive sleep apnea: A case-control study

PURPOSE: Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a common medical disorder with serious complications if untreated. Dentists play a vital role in the early diagnosis of this condition, thereby improving patients' prognoses. The purpose of this study was to identify patients with a high risk of OSA using simple cephalometric measurements in patients receiving routine dental care. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The present study was conducted on 206 patients divided into a high-risk group and a control group after answering the Berlin questionnaire. Cephalometric analysis of a digital cephalogram was performed to measure the upper airway diameter (UAD) and mandibular-to-hyoid bone distance (MP-H) by 2 observers at 2 different times. RESULTS: Among 206 patients, 93 (45%) were included in the high-risk group and 113 (55%) were in the control group. No significant difference was present between the groups with regard to gender, and the patients ranged in age from 18 to 65 years. The UAD measurements in the high-risk group were significantly lower than in the control group, and the MP-H measurements were significantly higher in the high-risk group than in the control group. The UAD was lower in middle-aged patients in both groups. CONCLUSION: Our study found that the UAD was lower in individuals with a high risk of OSA. Also, we found that middle-aged individuals of both genders were more likely to develop OSA. Dentists play a vital role in diagnosing patients at a high risk for OSA via thorough clinical examinations, risk factor analyses, and simple cephalometric analyses.

Are you willing to treat patients with HIV/AIDS? An anonymous survey among staff and students of dental institution.

BACKGROUND: India is one of the largest and most populated country in the world, with over one billion inhabitants. Of this number, it is estimated that around 23.9 lakh people are currently suffering with HIV. People living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) require increasingly competent and compassionate health care, including oral health care. OBJECTIVES: The present study was conducted with the objective of evaluating the response of dental health care professionals (staff and students) in willingness to provide treatment to HIV/AIDS patients and whether the training and education provided to them is sufficient to handle such patients, or whether there is necessity for advanced curriculum to be implemented. MATERIALS AND METHODS: An anonymous survey with the permission from ethical committee of dental institution was conducted with the use self-administered questionnaire eliciting information on self-rated HIV/AIDS knowledge, attitudes, infection control practices, occupational risk perception and willingness to treat HIV/AIDS patients. RESULTS: An increase in level of knowledge was observed with the increase in year of study from first BDS to post graduation and MDS staff. It was observed that interns and post graduate students were willing to treat patients with HIV/AIDS. Staff of the institution showed greater concern to undergo training to provide efficient treatment to patients with HIV/AIDS. CONCLUSION: It was concluded that there was a positive attitude and willingness of staff and students to treat a patient suffering with HIV/AIDS. Also, there was willingness and interest of the staff and students of the dental institution to participate in training programmes to provide better and more efficient treatment to HIV/AIDS patients.

Oral health status in haemodialysis patients.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the oral and dental manifestations in non- diabetic and diabetic uraemic patients who were undergoing haemodialysis and to estimate and compare the salivary pH in these two groups. MATERIAL AND METHODS: Ninety Seven uraemic patients who were undergoing maintenance haemodialysis were included in the study. Subjective and objective findings were evaluated and recorded in a specially designed proforma. Predialytic unstimulated whole salivary pH was recorded by using pH-measuring strips. Dental health assessment consisted of DMFT and CPITN indices. RESULTS: A subjective oral manifestation of dysguesia was found to be more significant in non-diabetic patients (p<0.008). Statistically, a high significance was observed with mucosal petechiae in 31.9% patients of diabetic group .The overall DMFT score was significantly higher in diabetic group. A moderate significance was found with a CPI score of 5 (p<0.015). The pH of saliva was significantly higher among diabetic patients. CONCLUSION: The diabetic subjects who were on haemodialysis were at a high risk for developing periodontal disease and they exhibited a potential threat for dental decay and xerostomia. A lower salivary pH and a poor glycaemic control may affect their oral health. Further research is required to clarify the combined influence of diabetic nephropathy on oral health.

Randomized trial of aloe vera gel vs triamcinolone acetonide ointment in the treatment of oral lichen planus.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the effectiveness of aloe vera gel in the treatment of oral lichen planus when compared with triamcinolone acetonide. METHOD AND MATERIALS: A randomized, double-blind, clinical trial was designed. The study sample constituted 40 patients (23 males and 17 females) who were randomly divided into two equal groups. Group A patients received aloe vera gel, while group B patients received triamcinolone acetonide. RESULTS: Forty patients were included in the study. Most of the sample presented with erosive (n = 18) and atrophic (n = 14) variants of oral lichen planus. When clinical signs and symptoms were observed after 8 weeks of therapy, it was determined that aloe vera gel was more effective than triamcinolone acetonide in the treatment of oral lichen planus. CONCLUSION: Aloe vera gel can be considered a safe alternative treatment for oral lichen planus.

Spacing affects some but not all visual searches: implications for theories of attention and crowding.

We investigated the effect of varying interstimulus spacing on an upright among inverted face search and a red-green among green-red bisected disk search. Both tasks are classic examples of serial search; however, spacing affects them very differently: As spacing increased, face discrimination performance improved significantly, whereas performance on the bisected disks remained poor. (No effect of spacing was observed for either a red among green or an L among + search tasks, two classic examples of parallel search.) In a second experiment, we precued the target location so that attention was no longer a limiting factor: Both serial search tasks were now equally affected by spacing, a result we attribute to a more classical form of crowding. The observed spacing effect in visual search suggests that for certain tasks, serial search may result from local neuronal competition between target and distractors, soliciting attentional resources; in other cases, serial search must occur for another reason, for example, because an item-by-item, attention-mediated recognition must take place. We speculate that this distinction may be based on whether or not there exist neuronal populations tuned to the relevant target-distractor distinction, and we discuss the possible relations between this spacing effect in visual search and other forms of crowding.

Face identification in the near-absence of focal attention.

In contrast to artificial geometric shapes, natural scenes and face-gender can be processed even when spatial attention is not fully available. In this study, we investigate whether a finer discrimination, at the level of the individual, is possible in the near-absence of focal attention. Using the paradigm, subjects performed face identification on faces of celebrities and relatively unfamiliar individuals, along with a task that is known to engage spatial attention. We find that face-identification performance is only modestly impaired under dual-task conditions. These results suggest that the visual system is well able to make complex judgments of natural stimuli, even when attention is not fully available.

Binding is a local problem for natural objects and scenes.

Current theories hold that attention is necessary for binding the features of a visual object into a coherent representation, implying that interference should be observed when two objects must be recognized simultaneously: this is the well-known binding problem. Recent studies have suggested, however, that discriminating isolated natural scenes, objects or faces might be possible in the near absence of attention. It is still unclear what mechanisms underlie this remarkable ability. Here, we investigate whether the binding problem affects natural objects in the same way as other stimuli: is interference observed when two natural objects or scenes must be simultaneously processed? We show that in the presence of competing objects, performance in the near absence of attention depends on the relative distance between stimuli: discrimination is good for stimuli far enough apart, and poor for close enough stimuli. In contrast, seemingly simpler but unfamiliar synthetic objects could not be bound in the near absence of attention, independent of the distance between them. Thus, natural objects are special in that they suffer from the binding problem, but only locally. We surmise that this particular type of local binding for natural objects and scenes could be "hardwired" by dedicated neuronal populations.

Visual search and dual tasks reveal two distinct attentional resources.

Most theories of visual processing assume that a target will "pop out" from an array of distractors ("parallel" visual search, e.g., color or orientation discrimination) if targets and distractors can be discriminated without attention. When the discrimination requires attention (e.g., rotated L vs. T or red-green vs. green-red bisected disks), "serial" examination is needed in visual search. Attentional requirements are also frequently assessed by measuring interference from a concurrently performed attentionally demanding task. It is commonly believed that attention acts equivalently in dual-task and visual search paradigms, based on the implicit assumption that visual attentional requirements can be defined along a single dimension. Here we show that there is no such equivalence: We report on targets that do not trigger pop-out, even though they can be discriminated from distractors with attention occupied elsewhere (natural scenes, color-orientation conjunctions); conversely, we show that certain targets that pop out among distractors need undivided attention to be effectively discriminated from distractors when presented in isolation (rotated L vs. +, depth-rotated cubes). In other words, visual search and dual-task performance reveal attentional resources along two independent dimensions. We suggest an interpretation of these results in terms of neuronal selectivities and receptive field size effects.