Sergio Uribe in his first Dental ELf blog looks at this review of the predictive performance of seven caries risk assessment models. While the findings suggest a resonable performance from the full and reduced Cariogram more high quality studies are needed in particular in relation to communication of risk to patients and its impact.
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This Cochrane review update was to estimate the diagnostic accuracy of index tests for the detection of oral cancer and oral potentially malignant disorders, in people presenting with clinically evident suspicious and innocuous lesions.
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This Cochrane review of interventions to treat carious lesions conventionally considered to require restorations in primary or permanent teeth with vital pulps included 27 RCTs. Compared with conventional treatment there were lower numbers of failures with the Hall technique and selective excavation (SE) in primary teeth and with SE and stepwise removal in permanent teeth.
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This Cochrane review of the effectiveness of lasers in the treatment of dentine hypersensitivity included 23 RCTs. The findings suggest that lasers may reduce pain intensity at short, medium, or long term when compared to placebo/no treatment. However the evidence is limited and of low to very low certainty.
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This review of the evidence on the malignant transformation of oral proliferative verrucous leukoplakia included 17 mainly retrospective observational studies. The overall estimate for malignant transformation was 43.87% (95% CI; 31.93 to 56.13) but only 4 studies were at low risk of bias.
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This review evaluating risk factors / predictors of tooth loss in patients with periodontitis having periodontal therapy and long-term periodontal maintenance (PM) included 33 studies only 3 of which were prospective. There findings suggest that patients having long-term PM suffer the loss of 1 tooth per patient every 10 years.
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This review comparing the effects of vacuum-formed retainers (VFR) and Hawley retainers (HR) on periodontal health included 6 RCTs. While the findings suggests a statistical benefit in favour of HR in the short term the studies are small, short-term and most ( 5) were considered to be at high risk of bias.
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This review of the distribution of histological subtypes, treatment and overall survival (OS) rates of head and neck sacomas included 8 studies from 6 countries. Meta-analysis (5 studies) found the 5-year OS = 74%(95%CI; 63 to 84%)
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This review of the efficacy of graftless maxillary sinus membrane elevation using the lateral window approach for implantation in the atrophic maxilla included 9 RCTs. While some difference between grafted and graftless sinus lifts were shown at 6 months only a limited number of small short term trials were available.
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This review of the use and diagnostic accuracy of saliva tests for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 included 16 studies. THe findings suggests good diagnostic accuracy but furteher research is needed to determine confounding factors such as method and time of sample collection, transport medium, storage etc. prior to population testing.
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