Awareness about emergency management of avulsed tooth among intern dentists-a cross-sectional observational study.

Tooth avulsion is a frequently encountered dental emergency. Children are commonly reported group due to frequent sports activities, trauma, accidents and falls. Prompt emergency management is vital for long term success and to avoid morbidity. The study was aimed to assess the understanding of intern dentists about the emergency handling of avulsed teeth cases as mostly they are first responders among health care personnel. In this study a fourteen-item questionnaire with predefined responses was shared as online Google survey form with intern dentists of 5 different dental teaching hospitals of Islamabad, Pakistan. The duration of the study was 6 months (01 March 2022 to 31 August 2022). The questions were intended to collect personal information and to check level of knowledge and awareness about the management of avulsed tooth among the dental interns. The data was analyzed by statistical methods and is presented through tables and descriptive methods. In total, 152 participants completed the shared questionnaire. The vast majority (71%) of them were aware of the initial management of avulsed teeth, 49% were aware of the ideal transport medium for an avulsed tooth, (43%) were aware of the critical time for successful replantation, while (62%) had knowledge of the multiple factors responsible for the outcome of the tooth replantation. For majority of the statements, female participants had better knowledge as compared to their male counterparts. Statistically significant difference was noted for the statement "If you found the knocked-out tooth and it is dirty what will be your initial approach?" with female participants having better knowledge as compared to the male (p value = 0.005). Based on our study results, generally dental interns are well-informed but still lack expected level of awareness regarding the proper management protocol for avulsed tooth. Hence, improvement is needed regarding the effective handling of avulsed teeth cases.

Assessment of parental acceptance towards different non-pharmacological behaviour management techniques in pediatric dental care-a cross-sectional study.

It is imperative to manage children with empathy and concern for their well-being in order to carry out any dental procedure smoothly. Owing to the inherent fear of dental operatory, behaviour management of children is an important aspect of pediatric dental care. Many techniques are available to help manage the behaviour of children. It is, however important to educate parents about these techniques and to get their cooperation for these techniques to be used on their children.This study aimed to familiarize the parents with non-pharmacological behavior management techniques and to determine the parental acceptance of such techniques in children seeking dental treatment in specialty care dental units. A total of 303 parents were evaluated through online questionnaires in this research. They were shown videos of randomly selected non-pharmacologic behaviour management techniques including tell-show-do, positive reinforcement, modelling and voice control. Parents were asked to watch the videos and give their response on seven-items inquiring about their acceptance levels regarding the respective techniques. The responses were recorded on a Likert scales ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. According to parental acceptance score (PAS), positive reinforcement was the most accepted technique whereas voice control was the least acceptable technique. Majority of the parents were more receptive towards those techniques that involved a healthy and friendly communication between a dentist and the pediatric patient such as, positive reinforcement, tell show do and modelling. Most significantly the people having low socio-economic status (SES) in Pakistan were more acceptable of voice control than people with high SES.