Location: La Maison de l’Artisanat 12 avenue Marceau 75008 Paris France
Location: Hyatt Regency Nice Palais de la Méditerranée 13 Promenade des Anglais 06000 Nice France Sensor Intraoral Digital
Jeremy Booth, Dental Tribune International
BANGKOK, Thailand: The use of telehealth services increased rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting wider acceptance of digital consultations and interest in using telehealth as a tool to improve healthcare access and equity. A study by researchers in Thailand has explored the efficacy of using intra-oral cameras to conduct remote screening for oral diseases in the Thai prison population, for whom access to care is constrained because of limited prison staff, among other reasons. They found that the cameras enabled an acceptable level of diagnostic accuracy that could help to prioritise treatment and facilitate greater access to care.
The researchers aimed to test the diagnostic accuracy of remote screenings compared with that of physical oral examinations. Prisoner health volunteers—prisoners given basic medical training in order to promote disease prevention and health and conduct disease surveillance in Thai prisons as part of a healthcare project started in 2019—were taught to use intra-oral cameras to capture photographs of symptomatic areas in the mouths of prisoners who had reported dental problems. Based on the captured data, treatment needs were independently determined by the volunteers and a dentist, and the results were compared with assessments by a second dentist, who performed oral examinations of the same prisoners.
A total of 152 male prisoners confined at the Sisaket provincial correctional facility in Thailand were screened by the volunteers and dentists and the data collected pertained to 215 teeth. The researchers found that the teledentistry and direct oral examinations resulted in a diagnostic accuracy of at least 80% for all patients. The volunteers were found to be less effective in determining the need for dental scaling and surgical removal of impacted teeth.
The researchers concluded that the use of teledentistry to screen for oral problems enabled the treating dentists to achieve an acceptable diagnostic accuracy, but that the technology used was not sufficient to identify all dental problems and treatment needs. Diagnosing periodontal problems was identified as an area of weakness, owing to difficulties in capturing subgingival calculus deposits with the intra-oral cameras. “Furthermore, the imaging cannot provide information that can be obtained from tactile evaluation, such as active or arrested dental caries,” the researchers wrote.
Discussing the results, the authors said that teledentistry screenings in prisons could enable prompt assessment and prioritisation of oral care needs and reduce the number of direct dental examinations required, thereby enabling the facilities to use their limited healthcare resources better. They said that, for further studies, “using the [intra-oral camera] to record a video for additional information, such as tooth mobility and gingival bleeding, may be required to increase diagnostic accuracy of dental treatment need”.
The study, titled “Facilitating dental disease screening program in prisoners using an intraoral camera in teledentistry”, was published online on 29 April 2023 in BDJ Open.
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
SEOUL, South Korea: Even though intra-oral scanners have been around for more than three decades and their use in dental practice is increasing, few ...
GIESSEN, Germany: Researchers in Germany have studied the efficacy of intra-oral scanners as a communication tool in paediatric dentistry by comparing the ...
MELBOURNE, Australia: The value of mouthwash as part of routine oral hygiene has often been questioned in the literature. Seeking to provide the most ...
ATLANTA, U.S.: When it comes to oral health, creating good habits in children can have lasting positive impacts later in life, however as with most things, ...
COLUMBUS, Ohio, USA: As previous laboratory studies have suggested that dietary administration of whole strawberries has substantial potential as a strategy...
SEOUL, South Korea: The integration of CAD/CAM technologies into clinical dental workflows continues to grow as digital dentistry devices become more easily...
SHEFFIELD, UK: Currently, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines recommend that dentists should generally not use ...
CHANGZHOU, China: The Chinese dental supply company Eighteeth has acquired ZHEAN Healthcare, an innovative Chinese manufacturer specialising in the research...
LOUISVILLE, Ky., US: Researchers from the US have recently examined the role that oral microbes play in regulating antiviral responses in the oral cavity. ...
HELSINKI, Finland: Finnish manufacturer of state-of-the-art 3-D digital imaging solutions Planmeca has announced Planmeca Somia, a light, slender and ...
NEWARK, N.J., U.S.: Owing to the pain management benefits of this class of drugs, the opioid overdose epidemic persists in the U.S., and various studies ...
SCHAAN, Liechtenstein: The Ivoclar Group, a leading global manufacturer of integrated solutions for high-quality dental restorations, has closed the 2023 ...
Dental crown restoration is a common procedure in dentistry for damaged or weakened teeth. Traditionally, this process has required multiple visits to the ...
Over the past two decades, several studies have demonstrated that mandibular retrusion is a common skeletal feature in patients with Class II ...
Digital Intraoral Scanner © 2024 - All rights reserved - Dental Tribune International