What is the difference between implant success and survival and how will it change the future use of implants as a permanent solution to tooth loss?

The nature of dental implants as a treatment plan for patients is often viewed as something relatively new, but the idea of dental implants has long been a part of history. Dating back as far as the Mayan civilization, dental implants have increasingly become prevalent in modern society. As time progressed, various modern forms of dental implants materialized, with the first of these being the eposteal implant. Post 1943, the eposteal dental implants were then replaced by the more novel transosteal implants, and then followed by the current implant model, the endosteal implant. Presently, in the US alone, there are upwards of 700,000 implants being inserted annually so there is no question of the impact dental implants have, and will continue to have, on dentistry and quality of life for patients. Implants are often evaluated in terms of success versus survival, where "success" is denoted if a particular implant meets the success criteria it is being evaluated with, while "survival" simply means the implant exists in the mouth. The impasse that arises here is that the two terms of success and survival are so closely intertwined that implant success can be misrepresented, and wrongfully thought of as ubiquitous among all patients. This literature review takes a comprehensive look at dental implants, and proceeds to evaluate associated case studies as well as posit how implants affect modern day dentistry

Finding the most navigable path in road networks

Input to the Most Navigable Path (MNP) problem consists of the following: (a) a road network represented as a directed graph, where each edge is associated with numeric attributes of cost and “navigability score” values; (b) a source and a destination and; (c) a budget value which denotes the maximum permissible cost of the solution. Given the input, MNP aims to determine a path between the source and the destination which maximizes the navigability score while constraining its cost to be within the given budget value. The problem can be modeled as the arc orienteering problem which is known to be NP-hard. The current state-of-the-art for this problem may generate paths having loops, and its adaptation for MNP that yields simple paths, was found to be inefficient. In this paper, we propose five novel algorithms for the MNP problem. Our algorithms first compute a seed path from the source to the destination, and then modify the seed path to improve its navigability. We explore two approaches to compute the seed path. For modification of the seed path, we explore different Dynamic Programming based approaches. We also propose an indexing structure for the MNP problem which helps in reducing the running time of some of our algorithms. Our experimental results indicate that the proposed solutions yield comparable or better solutions while being orders of magnitude faster than the current state-of-the-art for large real road networks

Seroprevalence of human immunodeficiency virus, hepatitis B and hepatitis C among blood donors at a tertiary care hospital in North India

Background: The prevalence of transfusion transmitted infections (TTIs), in blood transfusion services are a major problem across blood banks and hospitals in the world. In, India, the effort to provide safe transfusion to patients is a heightened problem for various reasons. In this study, seroprevalence of Transfusion transmitted infections such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis B virus (HBV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) was investigated in a pool of blood donors.Methods: The data collection was carried out for a period of two years from, January 2017 to December 2018, and total sample size of donors was 38,142. We studied the frequency, gender wise distribution, donor (first time vs repeat) wise distribution and yearly trend of seroprevalence of TTIs in blood units donated at our hospital.Results: A total of 37,457 (98.2%) males and 685 (1.79%) females donated blood during the study period. The results suggest that among the blood donors, the prevalence of HCV was highest (0.77%) followed by HBV (0.46%) and HIV (0.13%). Seropositivity was found to be more in first-time donors (0.83%) as compared to repeat-donors (0.52%). Seropositivity was found to be more among males (1.35%) than females (0.01%). The discussion suggests underlying reasons for the results along-with future direction of research.Conclusions: The need of the hour is to encourage repeat voluntary blood donors in order to maintain safe supply of blood and its components to donors. Efforts should be made to include females in the blood donor pool by increasing awareness and through dedicated efforts to improve female health and nutrition

Bio Pharmaceutics Classification System (BCS) Class IV Drug Nanoparticles: Quantum Leap to Improve Their Therapeutic Index

Purpose: Biopharmaceutics classification system (BCS) class IV compounds, exhibits least oral bioavailability, low solubility and intestinal permeability among all pharmaceutical classes of drugs. Thus, these drugs need more compatible and efficient delivery system. Since, their solubility in various medium, remains a limitation so, polymeric nano coacervates based drug loading with modified approach for them may prove to be a solution ahead. Therefore, in present study Chitosan is opted for encapsulating the BCS class IV drug (Hydrochlorothiazide) to attain better stability, enhanced permeability and lower toxicity. Methods: For this study, Hydrochlorothiazide (HCTZ) was opted for formulating chitosan based nano-coacervate system. Results: Optimized HCTZ nanocoacervates exhibited the average particle size of 91.39 ± 0.75 nm with Poly-dispersity index score of 0.159 ± 0.01, indicating homogeneity of colloidal solution. Zeta potential and encapsulation efficiency of HCTZ nanocoacervates were recorded as -18.9 ± 0.8 mV and 76.69 ± 0.82 % respectively. Further, from TEM and SEM evaluation the average particle size for the same were found in conformity (35-50 nm), with almost spherical morphology. Also, the EDX (Electron Dispersive X-ray) spectrometry and FT – IR analysis of optimized formulation indicated the balanced chemical composition and interaction between the polymeric molecules. The HCTZ nano coacervates showed the linear diffusion profile through the dialysis membrane. Conclusion: We can conclude from the present study that the optimized HCTZ nano coacervates may prove to be a suitable potential option for effective delivery of BCS class IV drugs

Classification of paediatric brain tumours by diffusion weighted imaging and machine learning

To determine if apparent diffusion coefficients (ADC) can discriminate between posterior fossa brain tumours on a multicentre basis. A total of 124 paediatric patients with posterior fossa tumours (including 55 Medulloblastomas, 36 Pilocytic Astrocytomas and 26 Ependymomas) were scanned using diffusion weighted imaging across 12 different hospitals using a total of 18 different scanners. Apparent diffusion coefficient maps were produced and histogram data was extracted from tumour regions of interest. Total histograms and histogram metrics (mean, variance, skew, kurtosis and 10th, 20th and 50th quantiles) were used as data input for classifiers with accuracy determined by tenfold cross validation. Mean ADC values from the tumour regions of interest differed between tumour types, (ANOVA P < 0.001). A cut off value for mean ADC between Ependymomas and Medulloblastomas was found to be of 0.984 × 10 -3 mm 2 s -1 with sensitivity 80.8% and specificity 80.0%. Overall classification for the ADC histogram metrics were 85% using Naïve Bayes and 84% for Random Forest classifiers. The most commonly occurring posterior fossa paediatric brain tumours can be classified using Apparent Diffusion Coefficient histogram values to a high accuracy on a multicentre basis

ASSESSMENT OF SERVICE QUALITY-A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

ABSTRACT INTRODUCTIO