Dentists’ Knowledge, Attitudes and Practices Regarding Hepatitis B, C and Human Immunodeficiency Virus / Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome In Northeast Part of Rajasthan

Introduction: Healthcare professionals including surgeons, dentists and paramedical personnel’s belong to high risk group of transmitting blood borne pathogens. Keeping this in view a study was proposed to assess the Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices (KAP) of dental professionals towards different viral diseases in northeast part of Rajasthan. Materials and Method: A cross-sectional, descriptive study was conducted among 500 randomly selected dentists in Jaipur district. Questions regarding KAP of hepatitis B (HBV), Hepatitis C (HCV) and Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) / Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) were included in the questionnaire. Statistical analysis was done through SPSS Ver. 20.0. software using chi-square test, independent t-test and analysis of variance (ANOVA) to evaluate the differences between parameters. Results: The result indicates that the majority of the study subjects (60%) were female. The mean (+Standard Deviation) for age and work experience was 35.5+8.85 and 5.6+8.76 respectively. The mean value of KAP was 38.4+3.23, 21.5+4.34 and 23.05+5.67 respectively. It was observed that knowledge regarding HBV, HCV and HIV/AIDS was statistically significant with work experience (>10 Years; p<0.001), year of graduation (after 2006; p<0.001). Attitude of study subjects for HBV, HCV and HIV/AIDS was significantly inclined by age group (< 30 years: P = 0.011), work experience (≥10 years: P < 0.001), and place of work (dental clinic: P = 0.013). Conclusions: The observations of the study highlighted a reasonable level of knowledge and attitude of dental practitioners for HBV, HCV and HIV/AIDS infections. However there is a need of improvement in the knowledge level which can alter their attitude and practice towards patients with HBV, HCV and HIV/AIDS infection

Efficacy of Pre-Operative Submucosal Injection of Dexamethasone in Mandibular Third Molar Surgery: A Randomized Control Trial

INTRODUCTION: Surgical extraction of third molar irrespective of any technique results in postoperative pain, swelling of face and limited mouth opening. The aim of the present study was to assess and compare the effects of Dexamethasone (4mg) administered prior to surgery.MATERIALS AND METHOD: A randomized control trial was conducted which included a total of fifty patients. All the patients were randomly put in two groups of twenty five each. Group I patients underwent transalveolar extraction of third molar under local anesthesia and standard oral drug regime. Group II patients received an additional submucosal injection of dexamethasone 4 mg, thirty minutes prior administration of local anaesthesia. Pain, swelling and mouth opening was recorded on second, seventh and tenth post-operative days after surgery.RESULTS: The difference in pain scores on second post-operative day between two groups were found statistically non-significant. However, there was significant reduction in pain scores on seventh and tenth day in both groups. Mouth opening showed statistically significant difference between the two groups.CONCLUSION: The observations of the present study provide a fundamental basis for the use of corticosteroids such as dexamethasone sodium phosphate in the form of submucosal administration in lower than usual doses to decrease postoperative inflammation when compare to other routes of drug administration

Phenotypic characterization, genetic diversity assessment in 6,778 accessions of Barley ( Hordeum vulgare L. ssp. vulgare) germplasm conserved in national genebank of India and development of a core set

The entire collection of cultivated barley germplasm accessions conserved in the Indian National Genebank (INGB) was characterized for nine qualitative and 8 quantitative traits to assess the nature and magnitude of prevailing genetic variability and to develop a core set. A wide range of variability was observed for days to spike emergence (51–139 days), days to physiological maturity (100–152 days), plant height (45.96–171.32 cm), spike length (3.44–13.73 cm), grain number/spike (10.48–82.35), and 100-grain weight (1.20–6.86 g). Initially, seven independent core sets were derived using 3 core construction tools– MSTRAT, PowerCore, and Core Hunter 3 by employing the maximization method, heuristic sampling, and optimisation of average genetic distances, respectively. The core set-3 generated by Core Hunter 3 by simultaneous optimisation of diversity and representativeness, captured maximum genetic diversity of the whole collection as evident from the desirable genetic distance, variance difference percentage (VD; 87.5%), coincidence rate of range (CR; 94.27%) and variable rate of coefficient of variance (VR; 113.8%), which were more than threshold value of VD (80%), CR (80%), and VR (100%) required for good core collection. The coefficient of variation and Shannon–Weaver diversity indices were increased in the core set as compared with the whole collection. The low value of Kullback-Leibler distance (0.024–0.071) for all traits and quantile-quantile plots revealed a negligible difference between trait distribution patterns among the core set and entire assembly. Correlogram revealed that trait associations and their magnitude were conserved for most of the traits after sampling of the core set. The extraction of the INGB barley core set and identification of promising accessions for agronomically important traits in different genetic backgrounds will pave the way for expedited access to genetically diverse and agronomically important germplasm for barley breeding