This review assessing the effectiveness of intraoral stents in reducing toxicities in oral cavity induced by radiotherapy in head and neck region included 7 small studies. While the analysis suggests a beneficial effect from the use of intraoral stents the included studies only provide verylow certainty evidence so further high-quality RCTs are needed.
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Ian Hamilton appraises a systematic review and meta-analysis on the association of opioid agonist treatment with all-cause mortality and specific causes of death among people with opioid dependence.
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Felicity Pearce, Bani Kahai and Derek Tracy summarise a recent meta-analysis examining safety planning-type interventions for suicide prevention.
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This review evaluating the difference between fibre and metal posts for endodontically treated teeth included 10 studies 6 of which were RCTs. The findings suggest no differences in outcomes between the two main types of post assessed. However, the evidence is of low certainty.
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Anjuli Kaul blogs about a new systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal cohort studies, which explores the relationship between PTSD and all-cause dementia.
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This review assessing the efficacy and morbidity of biodegradable vs. titanium osteosyntheses in orthognathic surgery included 33 studies 11 of which were RCTs. The findings suggest that biodegradable osteosyntheses is a valid alternative to titanium osteosyntheses for orthognathic surgery, but the quality of evidence is low.
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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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Francesca Bentivegna summarises a recent review which suggests that schizophrenia, “personality disorders” and psychopathy may be linked to reading skills deficits in some people.
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