Patients’ perception of own efforts versus clinically observed outcomes of non-surgical periodontal therapy in a Norwegian population: an observational study

Background Most periodontal intervention studies have focused on biomedical qualities like change in pocket depth and clinical attachment levels. Very few studies have described patient response in terms of how patients' general lives are affected by disease, treatment, and communication with therapy providers. Thus the aim of the present study was to investigate patient response to systematic periodontal information, motivation and treatment strategy (primary aim) by comparing the patients’ perception of own efforts and results with those clinically registered in a trans-sectional, observational study (secondary aim). Methods One year after treatment of 184 patients, 152 completed a questionnaire covering aspects of received oral health information and instruction, expectations, communication with the therapeutic team, behavioral change, self-perceived outcomes and satisfaction. Results More than 90% of the patients were satisfied with the interaction with the specialist team. 98% were satisfied with the information and instruction they had been given. 84% said that the information had been necessary to make them change their behavior towards better oral hygiene. Pain and discomfort, as well as bleeding were reduced substantially from before to after treatment, and 28 patients reported to have stopped smoking. In all questions regarding well-being there were statistically significant changes towards positive impact following therapy. Conclusions Periodontal treatment, including customized information and education on the etiology and pathogenesis, prevention and treatment as well as maintenance of periodontal diseases resulted in a high degree of short- and long term compliance, and very good patient centered outcomes, which again had a positive impact on the patients’ satisfaction. The patient centered outcomes correlated mostly with the compared clinical endpoints. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT01318928

Radiographic alveolar bone level and levels of serum 25-OH-Vitamin D3 in ethnic Norwegian and Tamil periodontitis patients and their periodontally healthy controls

Background Studies suggest association between low serum 25-OH-Vitamin D3 (VitD) and chronic destructive periodontal diseases. The main sources of VitD is sun exposure and fat fish. Subjects with dark skin will therefore generate less VitD as response to sun exposure. The aim of the study was to assess the radiographic bone level and levels of serum VitD in ethnic Norwegian and Tamil periodontitis patients and their respective healthy controls. Methods Twenty-seven Tamil periodontitis patients living in Norway were compared to 21 Tamil controls as well as to 21 Norwegian periodontitis patients and 23 Norwegian controls. Marginal bone level was diagnosed on radiographs. VitD levels were diagnosed in blood samples by high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry. Results VitD levels were lower in Norwegian periodontitis patients than in controls, while no significant differences were observed between Tamil periodontitis patients and controls despite the significant difference between RBL between the periodontitis patients and controls in both groups. When calculating the odds ratio for having periodontal disease in both populations together, it appeared that one unit increased serum VitD (i.e. 1 nmol/L) decreased the odds of having radiographic bone loss by 4%. Conclusion According to logistic regression, and after correcting for confounding factors, VitD levels showed significant association with the presence of periodontitis, as expressed by radiographic bone loss, in all patients combined

A new digital tool for radiographic bone level measurements in longitudinal studies

Background The reproducibility of measurements on radiographs is influenced by the techniques by which the images as well as the measurements are obtained. Thus, bias resulting from errors in the image and/or image examinations at two points in time may result in wrongful registrations of true biological or pathological changes. The aim of the present study was to propose and evaluate an indirect radiological examination technique, by which bias, when measuring radiographic bone level, could be substantially reduced as compared to the technique using direct mm measurements. Methods A plugin to ImageJ was designed to reduce bias when measuring bone loss on radiographic images. In human dry mandibles, radiographic images of 20 teeth were obtained parallel with the tooth axis (alpha = 0) and at an angle of 30° deviation. The direct technique of measuring radiographic bone level (RBL) and the indirect, length-adjusted RBL were registered by four researchers in a double blinded fashion. Results When mean RBL measured at 0° angle was 7.0 mm, the corresponding mean RBL measured at 30° angle was 7.8 mm, signifying an 11.4 % increase (p = 0.032), whereas the mean length-adjusted RBL increased by 0.6 % (p = 0.9). Conclusions This study showed that the use of the original, direct technique (ImageJ) resulted in markedly biased radiographic bone level at 30° angle, while the proposed indirect length-adjusted technique (ImageJ plugin) did not

Integration of Heterogeneous Access Control Functionalities Using the New Generation of NI cRIO 903x Controllers

Engineering of Personnel Protection Systems (PPS) in large research facilities, such CERN, represents nowadays a major challenge in terms of requirements for safety and access control functionalities. PPS are usually conceived as two separate independent entities: a Safety System dealing with machine interlocks and subject to rigid safe-ty standards (e.g. IEC-61508); and a conventional Access Control System made by integration of different COTS technologies. The latter provides a large palette of func-tionalities and tools intended either to assist users access-ing the controlled areas, either to automate a certain number of control room operator's tasks. In this paper we analyse the benefits in terms of performance, cost and system maintainability of adopting the new generation of NI multipurpose CRIO 903x controllers. These new de-vices allows an optimal integration of a large set of access control functionalities, namely: automatic control of mo-torized devices, identification/count of users in zone, im-plementation of dedicated anti-intrusion algorithms, graphical display of relevant information for local users, and remote control/monitoring for control room opera-tors