Psychotropic medication in pregnancy: new evidence may help achieve a safe balance

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Joanne Wallace considers a recent health technology assessment on the risks and benefits of psychotropic medication in pregnancy, which supports previous associations between valproate and adverse child outcomes.

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Dental local anaesthesia and ophthalmic side effects

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65 case reports and 1 case series were included in this reviews of the ophthalmic side effects from dental local anaesthesia. 92 % were transitory the remainder permanent. 25% of the transitory side effects took up to 6 hours to resolve.

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Few adverse events with single dose oral analgesics for acute postoperative pain

This overview of adverse event rates associated with single dose oral analgesics includes data from 39 Cochrane reviews, and provides evidence that adverse events rates are generally similar with active drug and placebo.

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Tooth whitening at home–strips or gel?

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This review compared tooth whitening strips against 10% carbamide peroxide gel. Only 9 low quality studies were available and while meta-analysis found no difference between the interventions, the authors did not consider that strips were a substitute for gel.

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Air polishing- glycine powder has less potential for harm suggests review

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This review included 17 studies the majority (12) of which were in vitro; and all at risk of bias to greater or lesser extent. The results suggest that glycine powder air polishing had less potential for harm of oral hard and soft tissues than sodium bicarbonate powders.

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Evidence on the adverse effects of interproximal dental stripping is limited

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Interproximal dental stripping or interproximal enamel reduction (IER) was originally suggested back in the 1940s as a method of gaining space in the lower incisor region.  The aim of this review was to investigate the enamel roughness resulting from IER as well as the cariogenicity of IER in orthodontic patients. The databases, PubMed, Scopus, The [read the full story…]

Cochrane review finds quetiapine is equivalent in efficacy to typical antipsychotics and possibly causes fewer side effects

Antipsychotic medication is the standard treatment for schizophrenia and psychosis in the UK.  Given that psychosis is commonly a chronic condition and therefore that medication used to treat it often needs to be taken for several years, getting the medication “right” is important. As I mentioned in my first blog post for the Mental Elf, [read the full story…]

Review finds limited evidence for predisposing factors for irrigant extrusion during root canal treatment

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Irrigation of root canals is an integral part of root canal treatment. A range of irrigant materials have been used with sodium hypochlorite being the material most currently favoured.  However this and other agents can cause damage if not kept within the confines of the root canal system.  The aim of this review was to [read the full story…]

Smokers may have poorer results after periodontal treatment

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This latest critical summary from the ADA-EBD Center for Evidence-Based Dentistry looks at a review by Patel et al 2011 which addresses the question  of whether smokers have poorer bone regeneration than non-smokers after periodontal treatment. The appraiser considered this to be a well-conducted systematic review and meta-analysis that included 10 articles with 458 participants [read the full story…]

Little good quality evidence on whether to leave or remove impacted third molars involved in fractures of the angle of the mandible

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Fracture of the mandible often occurs through the angle where it may be closely related to, or involve an impacted third molar. There is a debate about whether they should always be extracted or retained.  The aim of this review was to measure the occurrence of postoperative infection following mandibular fixation performed in the presence [read the full story…]