Comparison of Dental Anxiety While Visiting Dental Clinics before and after Getting Vaccinated in Midst of COVID-19 Pandemic

Vaccination is critical to control the rate of coronavirus transmission and infectivity. Dental practices are a high-risk area for contracting coronavirus; this fact generates psychological disturbances amongst patients. In this study, we aimed to assess the levels of anxiety of patients while visiting dental practices before and after getting vaccinated. This cross-sectional study was carried out between March and December 2021. An electronic survey was distributed among the vaccinated individuals who visited dental clinics before and after getting vaccinated. The survey consisted of the following four parts: demographic characteristics, questions related to coronavirus, and anxiety scores before and after getting vaccinated. SPSS-25 was used to perform the statistical analysis, where paired t-test was used to compare the anxiety scores, and Mann–Whitney U test to assess the association of gender with anxiety scores. A p-value of ≤0.05 was considered to be statistically significant. A total of 400 vaccinated individuals participated in this study, with a response rate of 88.23%. The majority of the respondents (71.0%) did not test positive for coronavirus. More than half of the participants (54.0%) reported to not be suffering from any coronavirus-related symptoms. About 100 (25.0%) of the individuals stated that dental clinics are an environment in which there is a high risk of contracting coronavirus. In regards to the comparison of the mean MDAS scores of the participants before and after getting vaccinated, a significant difference (p = 0.001) was found. Vaccination has been recommended for all eligible individuals to control the transmission and infectivity of coronavirus. Vaccinations have decreased the dental anxiety of patients while visiting dental clinics. However, the protective measures are still valid and should be followed, regardless of the vaccination status.

Maintenance of Consent Paper in Daily Dental Practices

Background: To assess maintenance of consent paper in daily dental practices. Methods: It was a cross-sectional study. To assess maintenance of consent paper in daily dental practice at the chambers of the dentist. Data were collected through face to face interview. Dental chambers were selected by simple random sampling technique and respondents were selected purposively in Mymensingh sadar. 50 chambers and 70 dental surgeons were interviewed. Study period was January to March, 2019. Results: In respect of distribution of the chamber owners by sex, female owners comprised 16% and 84% was male owners. By educational background of chamber owners, 40% owners had no B.D.S degree. It was found that 16% dental chambers had two dental surgeons and 84% dental chambers had one dental surgeon. Of all, 92.90% dental surgeons had knowledge about consent paper. The study showed that 80% dental surgeon sometimes, 7.1% dental surgeon always maintained consent paper in daily practice. Among the dental surgeons, 44.3% sometimes faced problem for taking consent paper in daily practice. Among all, 71.4% maintained verbal consent, 7.1% written and 21.4% maintained implied consent. Of all, 94. 3% dental surgeons maintained written consent paper only for costly treatment and specialized cases while 18.6% thought that it was not important and 40% thought that time consuming and 34.3% thought that patients were not interested. It was also found that 42% ancillary of the dental chambers had diploma degree and 58% had no degree. Conclusion: It is a general legal and ethical principle that one must get valid consent because it is the patients' rights before starting treatment or physical investigation. JOPSOM 2021; 40(1): 22-25

Implementation Challenges of 3D Printing in Prosthodontics: A Ranking-Type Delphi

The reduction in cost and increasing benefits of 3D printing technologies suggest the potential for printing dental prosthetics. However, although 3D printing technologies seem to be promising, their implementation in practice is complicated. To identify and rank the greatest implementation challenges of 3D printing in dental practices, the present study surveys dentists, dental technicians, and 3D printing companies using a ranking-type Delphi study. Our findings imply that a lack of knowledge is the most crucial obstacle to the implementation of 3D printing technologies. The high training effort of staff and the favoring of conventional methods, such as milling, are ranked as the second and third most relevant factors. Investment costs ranked in seventh place, whereas the lack of manufacturing facilities and the obstacle of print duration ranked below average. An inclusive implementation of additive manufacturing could be achieved primarily through the education of dentists and other staff in dental practices. In this manner, production may be managed internally, and the implementation speed may be increased.

Perspectives of Dental Practitioners Regarding Their Readiness for Medical Emergencies: A Study in Saudi Arabia

Background: Training dental practitioners on emergency preparedness and response is essential for the successful management of medical emergencies. Objectives: To assess the perceptions of dental practitioners in Saudi Arabia about their readiness to manage medical emergencies in the dental practices. Methods: This cross-sectional survey was conducted among dental practitioners working in 52 dental centers in Saudi Arabia. Questionnaires mainly gathered data on the measures taken by dental practitioners to prevent medical emergencies, BLS certification, availability of essential drugs and equipment, and perceptions of dental practitioners regarding the adequacy of their training for medical emergencies. Results: Of the total 270 participants, the majority reported that they take medical history (94%), perform visual inspection (90%), consult with patients’ physician when needed (89%), and modify treatment plan as necessary (94%). However, only 19% of them routinely take baseline vital signs for their patients and 52.6% have valid BLS certification. Only 29.6% and 16.3% of dental practitioners have reported that they have all essential drugs and equipment, respectively. Conclusion: The preventive measures for medical emergency appears to be deficient because most dental practitioners are not routinely taking baseline vital signs for their patients. This important issue is combined with shortage of BLS certification among dental practitioners and inadequate availability of all medical emergency drugs and equipment in dental practices.

Assessment of awareness level among dentist regarding COVID-19 dental practice in Jammu city: a cross-sectional study

Background: Dentistry being one of the most exposed professions to COVID-19 infection, it has become necessary to establish a clinical protocol that should be applied in the working environment, to prevent the spread of virus.Methods: This Cross-sectional study was carried out on 393 practicing dentist of Jammu city. A Structured questionnaire was sent via internet to all the participants. The questionnaire consisted of demographic data (6 questions) and questions evaluating awareness (15 questions) of Dentist during COVID-19 Pandemic. The total awareness score was calculated based on subject's responses. Descriptive statistics, independent t- test and one- way ANNOVA was used for statistical analysis.Results: Mean age of the participants was 32±7.03 years. Out of 393 participants 329 (83.7%) exhibited high level of knowledge. Based on educational qualification, those dental practitioner with MDS exhibited more mean knowledge score than BDS practitioner (14.428±0.8091 versus 12.641±2.688, p=0.000)Conclusions: Most of the study subjects had adequate knowledge regarding COVID- 19 dental practices. However, all the study participants were keen to attend educational programs/webinars to further upgrade their knowledge regarding COVID-19 dental practices.

One Year of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Dental Medical Facilities in Germany: A Questionnaire-Based Analysis

(1) Background: The COVID-19 pandemic forced healthcare workers to adapt to challenges in both patient care and self-protection. Dental practitioners were confronted with a potentially high possibility of infection transmission due to aerosol-generating procedures. This study aims to present data on healthcare worker (HCW) screening, infection status of HCWs, pre-interventional testing, the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and the economic impact of the pandemic in dental facilities. (2) Methods: Dental facilities were surveyed nationwide using an online questionnaire. The acquisition of participants took place in cooperation with the German Society for Dentistry, Oral and Maxillofacial Medicine. (3) Results: A total of 1094 private practices participated. Of these, 39.1% treated fewer than 600 patients per quarter and 59.9% treated over 600 patients per quarter. Pre-interventional testing was rarely performed in either small (6.6%) or large practices (6.0%). Large practices had a significantly higher incidence of at least one SARS-CoV-2-positive HCW than small practices (26.2% vs.14.4%, p < 0.01). The main source of infection in small practices was the private environment, and this was even more significant in large practices (81.8% vs. 89.7%, p < 0.01). The procedure count either remained stable (34.0% of small practices vs. 46.2% of large practices) or decreased by up to 50% (52.6% of small practices vs. 44.4% of large practices). Revenue remained stable (24.8% of small practices vs. 34.2% of large practices) or decreased by up to 50% (64.5% of small practices vs. 55.3% of large practices, p = 0.03). Overall, employee numbers remained stable (75.5% of small practices vs. 76.8% of large practices). A vaccination readiness of 60–100% was shown in 60.5% (n = 405) of large practices and 59.9% (n = 251) of small practices. (4) Conclusion: Pre-interventional testing in dental practices should be increased further. Economic challenges affected small practices as well as large practices. Overall, a steady employee count could be maintained. Vaccination readiness is high in dental practices, although with some room for improvement.

Assessing the reliability of automatic sentiment analysis tools on rating the sentiment of reviews of NHS dental practices in England

Background Online reviews may act as a rich source of data to assess the quality of dental practices. Assessing the content and sentiment of reviews on a large scale is time consuming and expensive. Automation of the process of assigning sentiment to big data samples of reviews may allow for reviews to be used as Patient Reported Experience Measures for primary care dentistry. Aim To assess the reliability of three different online sentiment analysis tools (Amazon Comprehend DetectSentiment API (ACDAPI), Google and Monkeylearn) at assessing the sentiment of reviews of dental practices working on National Health Service contracts in the United Kingdom. Methods A Python 3 script was used to mine 15800 reviews from 4803 unique dental practices on the NHS.uk websites between April 2018 –March 2019. A random sample of 270 reviews were rated by the three sentiment analysis tools. These reviews were rated by 3 blinded independent human reviewers and a pooled sentiment score was assigned. Kappa statistics and polychoric evalutaiton were used to assess the level of agreement. Disagreements between the automated and human reviewers were qualitatively assessed. Results There was good agreement between the sentiment assigned to reviews by the human reviews and ACDAPI (k = 0.660). The Google (k = 0.706) and Monkeylearn (k = 0.728) showed slightly better agreement at the expense of usability on a massive dataset. There were 33 disagreements in rating between ACDAPI and human reviewers, of which n = 16 were due to syntax errors, n = 10 were due to misappropriation of the strength of conflicting emotions and n = 7 were due to a lack of overtly emotive language in the text. Conclusions There is good agreement between the sentiment of an online review assigned by a group of humans and by cloud-based sentiment analysis. This may allow the use of automated sentiment analysis for quality assessment of dental service provision in the NHS.

Esthetic Dentistry on Twitter: Benefits and Dangers

Objectives. The demand for esthetic dentistry is growing, and social media constitute the main driving force behind this revolution. Twitter is a leading social media platform; however, there is a lack of research on the pattern of communications and the impact of Twitter on esthetic dentistry. The purpose of this study was to analyze the content of tweets related to esthetic dentistry and to investigate how Twitter has affected the perception of, and demand for, esthetic dentistry. Moreover, it aimed to assess the potential benefits and risks of esthetic dentistry advertising strategies on Twitter as a potential social media platform. Materials and Methods. Using a specialized web scrapping tool made available by the Python programming language, a total of 54,000 public tweets were downloaded from Twitter at real-time by matching specific keywords. The downloaded tweets were manually filtered, and 13,787 tweets were included and categorized into four tweet sets by content. Results. The main categories were tweets regarding specific cosmetic procedure, totaling 56.53% (43.2% for veneers, 13.3% for whitening), advertisements (36.72%), information (5.53%), and general cosmetic dentistry (1.22%). Negative opinions towards veneers and whitening were the most common themes (68.03% and 43.44%). For veneers, illegal use for kids was the most common negative theme (59.7%) and being destructive for whitening (86.3%). Positive opinions counted 6.26% of veneers and 4.3% of whitening tweets. Advertising for whitening products was the second most common between all tweets (16.6%), and advertising for dental practices was the third (14.7%). Presenting facilities/services was the most common marketing strategy for dental practices (49.7%). Twitter was weakly used to circulate educational content (5.5%) and to post reviews (0.75%). Conclusion. Twitter was extensively used to share experiences/opinions towards dental cosmetic interventions. Advertising is another vital use of this platform. However, circulating information was the least common use of this social media. Additionally, tweeters were rarely to post online reviews and specific advices and recommendations regarding esthetic dentistry. Moreover, females tended to participate and tweet more significantly in cosmetic-related topics than males. This platform should be tailored efficiently to target users’ priorities and to improve health literacy and self-care. Twitter was weakly used to circulate educational content according to this study and rarely used to share online reviews.