Search PubMed⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

N B Pitts

Publications and source records attributed to N B Pitts.

149 records · Page 9Linked to original sources
PubMedDate not supplied

Are we ready to move from operative to non-operative/preventive treatment of dental caries in clinical practice?

This review focuses on the clinical interactions between patients and the dental team, not on caries prevention at a public health level. Many dentists no longer take a narrow surgical view seeking to apply interventive treatment as a one-off event at a certain trigger point of disease severity and the evidence that caries is an initially reversible, chronic disease with a known multi-factorial aetiology is being appreciated more widely. The caries process should be managed over time in an individualized way for each patient. Very few individuals can be considered to be truly 'caries free' when initial lesions as well as more advanced dentine lesions are considered. It is now very clear that, by itself, restorative treatment of the disease does not 'cure' caries. The caries process needs to be managed, in partnership with patients, over the changing challenges of a lifetime. The answer to the question posed in the title should be, in many cases, that we are ready to move to non-operative/preventive care (if we have not done so already). However, this should be for appropriate stages of lesion extent and in patients who respond to advice on recall frequency and preventive behaviours.

Consensus↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Tooth-brushing practices of parents and toddlers: a study of home-based videotaped sessions.

The aim of this pilot study was to investigate the tooth-brushing behaviour of parents and toddlers, by analysis of tooth-brushing sessions videotaped in families' homes. Eighteen families (self-selected from an ongoing preventive-intervention study) videotaped all home tooth-brushing sessions involving their toddler (average age 2.5 years) over a 24-hour period. The vast majority of families (89%) engaged in at least two sessions per day, usually supervised by mothers. The average length of the sessions was 142 s, although the brush tended to be in the child's mouth for less than half of that time. On average, only 10 s were spent brushing the front teeth, 13 s the back teeth, and 29 s spent on non-brushing activities (e.g., biting brush, sucking water). Three styles of brushing were identified, and families tended to be consistent in their use of these styles: exclusively parent-led (least common), exclusively child-led, and shared between parent and child (most common). In contrast with these poor behavioural outcomes, feedback from parents indicated that they were generally confident that the sessions had been effective in achieving clean teeth. These findings suggest that home-based tooth-brushing activity falls far short of professional expectations. Tooth-brushing, even with fluoride toothpaste, may be seriously compromised as a method of reducing caries in toddlers because teeth are being brushed too briefly.

Child, Preschool↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Visual and tactile assessment of arrested initial enamel carious lesions: an in vivo pilot study.

Accurate and reliable assessment of caries activity is important for determining appropriate treatment needs. The aim of this pilot study was to determine whether dentists could differentiate between the appearances (visual and tactile) of lesions inactivated by regular professional oral hygiene and those control lesions which were not cleaned (active). After a 3- to 4-week study period involving 10 children, with 4 similar carious lesions each, it was found that dentists were not able to reliably and reproducibly determine the subtle visual and tactile differences between active and inactive enamel lesions from a one-off clinical examination.

Child↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The diagnosis of dental caries: 3. Rationale and overview of present and possible future techniques.

A number of changes have taken place recently which may influence a practitioners choice of diagnostic methods for detecting and monitoring dental caries. The first two articles described the use of current diagnostic methods at various specific sites. This third paper discusses the rationale behind the use of these techniques and provides an overview of present techniques and those which may be useful in the future.

Dental Caries↗