Dental Trauma Tracker: A Mobile Phone Application for the Epidemiologic Surveillance of Dental and Maxillofacial Trauma

In the broad field of injury and traumatology, injuries affecting the maxillo-facial region have an important role: dental trauma (DT) makes up 35% of facial injuries, and 31-39% of dental emergencies are consequences of DT. Dental trauma is injury to the soft tissue as well as the teeth. Although in the majority of cases dental trauma is not fatal, it still may cause some long-lasting psychological or physical damage to the victims. Consequently, DT is recognised as a major dental public health problem worldwide. However, lack of data reduces the timeliness and effectiveness of dental trauma research. Thus the ‘Dental Trauma Tracker’ project was established to promote the development of research in dental trauma. The aim of this project was to implement a mobile phone-based application for the epidemiologic surveillance of dental and maxillo-facial trauma. The Dental Trauma Tracker application takes advantage of mobile phone data capture capabilities (text, photo, video, and audio) for epidemiologic surveillance of dental trauma. The initial work to activate larger scale, longer-term studies in the future is described. The goal in the initial stage is to present the development of a working prototype system collecting dental trauma data to provide an overview of the nature and extent of DT, letting researchers view and summarise the collected data, and make greater use of the data for improvements at a local level (e.g., educating on the best first aid, identifying high-risk locations and activities).

The future of pediatric dentistry education and curricula : A Chilean perspective

Publisher Copyright: © 2016 The Author(s). Copyright: Copyright 2016 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.Background: A meeting was organised to consolidate a network of researchers and academics from Australia, Brazil, Chile, the UK and the USA, relating to Early Childhood Caries (ECC) and Dental Trauma (DT). As part of this meeting, a dedicated session was held on the future of paediatric dental education and curricula. Twenty-four paediatric dentistry (PD) academics, representing eight Chilean dental schools, and three international specialists (from Brazil and Latvia) participated in group discussions facilitated by five members of the ECC/DT International Collaborative Network. Data were collected from group discussions which followed themes developed as guides to identify key issues associated with paediatric dentistry education, training and research. Discussion: Participants discussed current PD dental curricula in Chile, experiences in educating new cohorts of oral health care providers, and the outcomes of existing efforts in education and research in PD. They also, identified challenges, opportunities and areas in need of further development. Summary: This paper provides an introspective analysis of the education and training of PD in Chile; describes the input provided by participants into pediatric dentistry education and curricula; and sets out some key priorities for action with suggested directions to best prepare the future dental workforce to maximise oral health outcomes for children. Immediate priorities for action in paediatric dentistry in Chile were proposed.publishersversionPeer reviewe