Study on Non-Carious cervical lesions

Objective: To determine factors associated with Non-Carious Cervical Lesions (NCCLs) and the teeth most commonly involved in such lesions. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Operative Dentistry, Section of Dentistry at Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, Pakistan, from December 2005 to January 2006. Methodology: A total number of 95 patients with 671 teeth were evaluated using a pre-coded questionnaire. Subject of evaluation was teeth. Patients with symptomatic or asymptomatic NCCLs and permanent dentition were included. Patients exhibiting active, untreatable periodontal disease, rampant uncontrolled caries, xerostomia, primary dentition, patients undergoing orthodontic treatment or bleaching procedure were excluded from the study. Data analysis was done using Spearman’s correlation, Mann Whitney test and Kruskal-Wallis test. Results: Mean age of patients was 50.3 years (r=0.22, p=0.028); males (73%) had more NCCLs than females (23%). Majority (45.3%) of them brushed their teeth twice a day, with medium type of brush (48.4%) and horizontal (73.7%) brushing technique. Most of the patients were non-bruxists (90.5%), with Angles Class 1 occlusion (48.4%) and canine guidance (50.5%). Majority (74.7%) of the patients did not have sensitivity. Conclusion: First premolars in all the quadrants were the most frequently involved teeth in NCCLs. More males had NCCLs. Middle aged patients were more involved. A weak positive correlation was found between age and NCCLs. No association was observed between hand used and site of NCCLs, between wear facets and NCCL, Excursive guidance and NCCL, Angles classification and NCCL

Factors associated with Non-Carious Cervical Lesions (NCCLs) in teeth

OBJECTIVE: To determine factors associated with Non-Carious Cervical Lesions (NCCLs) and the teeth most commonly involved in such lesions. STUDY DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. PLACE AND DURATION OF STUDY: Department of Operative Dentistry, Section of Dentistry at Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, Pakistan, from December 2005 to January 2006. METHODOLOGY: A total number of 95 patients with 671 teeth were evaluated using a pre-coded questionnaire. Subject of evaluation was teeth. Patients with symptomatic or asymptomatic NCCLs and permanent dentition were included. Patients exhibiting active, untreatable periodontal disease, rampant uncontrolled caries, xerostomia, primary dentition, patients undergoing orthodontic treatment or bleaching procedure were excluded from the study. Data analysis was done using Spearman\u27s correlation, Mann Whitney test and Kruskal-Wallis test. RESULTS: Mean age of patients was 50.3 years (r=0.22, p=0.028); males (73%) had more NCCLs than females (23%). Majority (45.3%) of them brushed their teeth twice a day, with medium type of brush (48.4%) and horizontal (73.7%) brushing technique. Most of the patients were non-bruxists (90.5%), with Angles Class 1 occlusion (48.4%) and canine guidance (50.5%). Majority (74.7%) of the patients did not have sensitivity. CONCLUSION: First premolars in all the quadrants were the most frequently involved teeth in NCCLs. More males had NCCLs. Middle aged patients were more involved. A weak positive correlation was found between age and NCCLs. No association was observed between hand used and site of NCCLs, between wear facets and NCCL, Excursive guidance and NCCL, Angles classification and NCCL

Frequency and Distribution of Endodontically Treated Teeth

Objective: To determine the distribution and pattern of carious teeth involvement in permanent teeth requiring endodontic treatment. Study Design: Cross-sectional study. Place and Duration of Study: Dental Section of The Aga Khan University Hospital, Karachi, from September 2004 to March 2005. Methodology: Data was collected from the dental records of patients. Tooth was the unit of evaluation. Variables studied were demographics, tooth type, etiology of endodontic treatment and pattern of caries involvement. Data was analyzed using chi-square test and Fischer’s exact test. Results: The total number of patients was 190; total number of teeth involved were 235. Females had more endodontically treated teeth than males. There was no significant difference in the distribution of etiology of endodontic treatment in both genders (p=0.564). An increasing trend of endodontic procedure was observed with the increasing age of patients. Caries was the most common etiological factor leading to endodontic treatment (p = 0.011). Class-II cavity i.e. proximal surface of teeth was the most commonly involved surface in endodontically involved teeth (p \u3c 0.001). More molars had been endodontically treated followed by premolars and anterior teeth. Conclusion: Caries was the most common etiologic factor; lower molars were the most commonly involved and lower anteriors the least commonly involved teeth in endodontic procedure. Significant association was observed between etiology and tooth type. Significant association was found between cavity classification and etiology of endodontic treatment with class-II caries being most common

Providers’ Perception of Alert Fatigue After Implementation of User-Filtered Warnings

Alert fatigue is a complex problem that many health institutions face when using an electronic health record (EHR). The addition of user-filtered warnings (UFW) is a physicians’ proposed intervention at Inova Health System (IHS), a large 5-hospital health system in Northern Virginia, that allows prescribers to filter out specific drug-drug interactions and pregnancy and lactation medication alerts for a 30-day period. This study aims to determine the impact of UFW on physicians’ perception of alert fatigue and to calculate the reduction of medication alerts. It was hypothesized that the reduction in alerts will significantly impact physicians’ perception of alert fatigue in a positive manner. Physician perception of alert fatigue was assessed using online surveys before and after the implementation of UFW. Data from Medications Warnings Statistics reports were used to assess the reduction of alerts fired post-implementation of UFW. For the primary outcome, there was no significant difference in the overall perception of alert fatigue before and after the implementation of UFW. For the secondary outcome, the number of medication alerts was decreased by 16.7% post UFW implementation. Overall, the data does not support UFW to reduce alert fatigue

CyberEntRel: Joint Extraction of Cyber Entities and Relations using Deep Learning

The cyber threat intelligence (CTI) knowledge graph is beneficial for making robust defense strategies for security professionals. These are built from cyber threat intelligence data based on relation triples where each relation triple contains two entities associated with one relation. The main problem is that the CTI data is increasing more rapidly than expected and existing techniques are becoming ineffective for extracting the CTI information. This work mainly focuses on the extraction of cyber relation triples in an effective way using the joint extraction technique, which resolves the issues in the classical pipeline technique. Firstly, the ‘BIEOS’ tagging scheme was applied to CTI data using the joint tagging technique and then the relation triples were jointly extracted. This study utilized the attention-based RoBERTa-BiGRU-CRF model for sequential tagging. Finally, the relation triples were extracted using the relation-matching technique after matching the best suitable relation for the two predicted entities. The experimental results showed that this technique outperformed the state-of-the-art models in knowledge triple extraction on CTI data. Furthermore, a 7% increase in the F1 score also proved the effectiveness of this technique for the information extraction task on CTI data

Perceptions of Fellowship Trainees in Public and Private Tertiary Care Hospitals of Karachi

Background: The issues pertaining to postgraduate medical education have been debated for long but there has been little contribution to this literature from developing countries. Therefore, a need to make an accurate assessment regarding current status of postgraduate training in Pakistan was felt and feedback from residents is the cornerstone of such an assessment. The objective of our study was to document perceptions of FCPS trainees of medical and surgical disciplines in private and public tertiary care hospitals of Karachi, Pakistan.Material and Methods: This was a cross sectional survey of the medical and surgical FCPS trainees in three hospitals (1 public and 2 private) of Karachi Pakistan, conducted over a period of two months (1st November 2018 to 31st December 2018). A total of 325 participants selected by convenient sampling technique were included in the study. Data was collected through structured self-developed questionnaire and analyzed by SPSS version 16.0.Results: The percentage of postgraduate trainees in private hospitals working for more than 80hours/week is higher than those working in public sector hospitals (59.4% versus 42.4%). Topic presentation and Academic meetings (Conferences, Workshops and CMEs) were the most preferred teaching strategies in Postgraduate training (77.4% and 77.5%). About 62.7% of the residents believed that their program was in line with CPSP guidelines. Public sector hospitals were better in terms of medical benefits giving partial cover (62.8%) than private sector (P-value <0.001). Majority of trainees at private sector hospitals seemed satisfied with their working environment than at public hospital (77.5% versus 12.5%) (P-value <0.001). Trainees perceived that the security arrangements at both public and private hospitals were not adequate, but in case of emergency private hospitals seemed to have better security response as compared to public hospitals (89% versus 23%) with a significant difference of <0.001.Conclusions: Perception of most of the postgraduate trainees is that they are being adequately trained for the challenges of an independent physician or surgeon.Key words: Postgraduate training programs, Medical education, Trainees perception &nbsp

Paradox of Female Labor Force Participation in South Asia

Worldwide, startling gender disparities exist in employment. There has been a shift in gender culture in the present era which requires both men and women to have paid jobs and share household responsibilities. South Asian region with leading economies like India, Bangladesh and Nepal, presents an interesting paradox for research. Hence, the aim of this conceptual paper is to understand the push and pull factors which influence female labor force participation in the South Asian region in purview of various social, cultural and institutional impediments to engaging into their economic role. Specifically in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the female labor force participation rates are significantly lower than the other South Asian nations, scarce conceptual as well as empirical researches have been conducted till date to analyze the underlying reasons and consequences of gender inequality or in labor force participation. The article highlights that in case of majority of the developing countries of South Asia, there are numerous complications associated with prevalent gender stereotypes within the society and the division of labor. The author argues that it fails to acknowledge women’s triple role in the society. Lack of adequate institutional framework can be one of the prime reasons of low scores for the South Asian region that restrains women to enter productive employment sectors. Discrimination against women in labor force can be costly in the course of development. If properly utilized in the labor market, with the provision of an enabling environment, this huge workforce can make significant contributions to the economic development and growth of the region. Ultimately, it would aid in attaining the Sustainable Development Goals of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger from the world

Association of 25 Hydroxy Vitamin D Levels with Age in Community Acquired Pneumonia

Background : To determine association of 25 hydroxy vitamin D deficiency with age in patients with community acquired pneumonia (CAP). Methods: In this descriptive study 150 diagnosed patients of community-acquired pneumonia based on the CURB-65 scoring criteria were enrolled. The 25 hydroxy vitamin D levels were recorded in all patients. Patients were divided into three groups according to their age. Effect modifiers like gender were controlled by stratification. Post stratification chi square test was applied. A p value of 0.05 was considered significant. Results: Mean age of the patients was 40.05 ± 14.33 years (mean ± SD). Out of 150 patients 54.7% (n=82) were males while the 45.3% (n=68) were females. The mean level of vitamin D was 18.43 ± 5.005 (mean ± SD) ng/ml. When the cut off value for deficiency was applied i.e. 20 ng/ml, the 60% (n=90) patients were found deficient while 40% (n=60) patients had normal values. The p value was significant only for the age group to 35 to 50 years. Independent sample t test showed that the difference is statistically significant (p=0.003) in age groups between 35 to 50 years. Conclusions: Lower concentrations of vitamin D might be associated with CAP particularly in age group between 35 to 50 years

A Review of antihyperlipidemic effect of synthetic phenolic compounds

It is seen that most of the deaths are occurring due to diseases of cardiovascular system. There is a significant impact of lifestyle changes on the quality of health. Utilization of food highly rich with saturated fat and having low fiber content is one of the factors of disarray in energy balance. It is now evinced that hyperlipidemia is depicted as a major risk factor for the premature development of atherosclerosis and its cardiovascular complications. The prevalence of obesity has doubled in the past 25 years; today, two-thirds of adults are overweight in the United State [1]