Oral mini pulse therapy: report of a case and review of the literature.

Oral lichen planus (OLP) is a chronic mucocutaneous disease with an unknown aetiology, affecting 0.5-2% of the population and with a predilection for females in fourth to fifth decade of life. Most oral lichen planus lesions are asymptomatic but the atrophic and erosive forms of OLP can cause symptoms ranging from spontaneous soreness to severe pain interfering with eating, speech and swallowing. Various drugs have been used for the treatment of OLP including corticosteroids and other immunomodulators. However, no therapy is considered as the single most effective and without side effects in the management of this enigmatic disease. This paper presents a case of successful management of extensive, symptomatic atrophic OLP with a novel treatment protocol: oral mini pulse therapy with betamethasone. In spite of using long-term systemic corticosteroids, side effects were minimal and clinically uneventful. Further controlled trials with this therapy may provide a definitive mode of treatment for severe OLP cases.

An evaluation of third molar eruption for assessment of chronologic age: A panoramic study.

OBJECTIVES: The identity of a person can be established by assessing one's age, and in order to be entitled to civil rights and social benefits, verification of the chronological age is required and thereby age estimation has gained an increasing significance in recent years. Tooth eruption is one of the criteria of developmental morphology that can be evaluated by either clinical examination or by evaluation of dental radiographs to determine the dental age. The present study was aimed to evaluate the reliability of the third molar eruption stage as a parameter for forensic age estimation in living subjects. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The stage of wisdom tooth eruption in 77 male and 73 female Indian subjects aged between 12-26 years was determined by subjecting them to conventional orthopantomograms and was interpreted to assess the third molar eruption stages to evaluate the dental age. RESULTS: Predicted minimum age and mean age of the study sample were found to be significant predictors (P<0.001) of actual age. Minimum age was able to explain 58.3% of the variation in actual age and the mean age was able to explain 60.3% of variation in actual age. CONCLUSION: Third molar is fairly a reliable indicator to determine the age of alveolar, gingival, and complete emergence of third molar in the occlusal plane in adolescents and young adults. Minimum and most probable ages of examined subjects can also be evaluated using third molar eruption stage.