Oral health care for children and adults with disabilities is a health care area that has received scant attention. It is seen that most persons with a significant disability cannot find a professional resource to provide appropriate and necessary dental care. Lack of access to dental services for this growing segment of our population is reaching critical levels and is a national dilemma.

The incidence of Early Childhood caries is increasing due to complex behavioral variations among the children; the dental professionals are facing an uphill task to manage this condition in their routine practice. Many treatment protocols have been designed, each one claiming a distinct advantage over the other. Early childhood caries still remains an incompletely managed oral disease leading to prevalence of increased disease load among children.

Pulp vitality testing (PVT) is only one facet of oral diagnosis. An understanding of both the usefulness and limitations of pulp testing methods is essential if they are to be employed in clinical dentistry. Traditional methods which have been followed over the years have still been a point of controversy due to their limitations. With the advent of newer methods assessing pulpal vascularity, it is hoped that it would serve as an efficient diagnostic aid. This paper discusses the limitations of traditional pulp vitality testing methods in detail.

To compare dental students’, Interns’, and Practicing Dentist's attitude towards tobacco cessation promotion in dental setting.

The study was conducted on BDS 3rd year students, Interns and practicing dentists of Moradabad city. A 23-item written survey was administered to all the participants. Questions focused on dental students’, Interns’, and practicing dentist's attitude towards the dental professional's responsibilities and scope of practice in promotion of tobacco cessation.

Response rate was more than 90 percent (199/220). Respondents were 52 percent males and 48 percent females. There were 47 percent dental students, 32 percent interns and 21 percent doctors. Eighty-four percent agreed that it is within the scope of dental practice to advise patients to quit using tobacco and 82 percent agreed that tobacco cessation counseling in the dental office could impact patient's quitting. Nearly one-fifth (18 percent) were slightly or not interested in receiving tobacco cessation training.

Attitudes of the participants appear to be positive regarding the dental professional's responsibility to educate patients about the risk of tobacco use. However, some have reservations about the extent to which tobacco cessation services fit within the scope of dental practice, the efficiency of such services and the patient receptiveness.

Clinical observations and epidemiological studies suggest that some negative life events and psychological factors may contribute to an increased susceptibility to periodontal diseases. Management of periodontal diseases is a fundamental part of general practice. This study explored general dental practitioner's awareness about psychosomatic factors and their role in periodontal disease progression.

To evaluate the awareness of general dental practioners of Mangalore city and their professional behavior towards patients with stress and depression and periodontal infection.

Data were collected from 55 general dental practitioners of Mangalore city. 27 respondents were purely general practitioners and other were academicians who were practicing general dentistry.

the respondents had awareness about the effect of stress and depression on periodontal tissues and their management. They were able to identify the periodontal conditions which occur primarily because of stress.

The general dental practitioners play a key role in the success of the treatment of periodontal disease since they are the primary care providers. The respondents were significantly aware about the psychological factors such as stress and depression and its significance on periodontium. This may be due to the involvement of more number of young practitioners who were well educated about psychosomatic factors and their effects on periodontium in their dental education.

A study was done to determine dental knowledge and gingival health of pregnant women.

The survey was done on 208 antenatal women attending Government Maternity Hospital, Chennai. The dental knowledge was assessed by a close-ended questionnaire. Oral hygiene and gingival health were assessed using Oral Hygiene Index-Simplified and Gingival Index. Statistical analysis using McNemars Chi Square Test and Karl Pearson's Correlation test were done to evaluate the data.

More than 96.6% (201) of the women had good dental knowledge. Mild, moderate and severe gingivitis was found to be 49.5% (103), 46.6% (97) and 3.8% (8), respectively. 7.2% (15), 66.8% (139) and 26% (54) had good, fair and poor oral hygiene, respectively. There was a statistically significant moderate positive correlation between the OHI-S and GI scores (p = 0.001, Karl Pearson's Correlation Coefficient = 0.57).

Women should be educated on good oral hygiene practices so as to minimise prevalence of gingivitis during pregnancy.

To study the prevalence and correlation of Enamel Hypoplasia and Dental caries among school children aged 6-15 years in Bagalkot, Karnataka.

5500 school children aged 6-15 years from different schools in Bagalkot were examined with mouth mirror and probe under natural light. The findings were entered into standard examination forms.

Out of 5500 school children between the age of 6 - 15 years, 507 (9%) had carious teeth with hypoplasia with a mean of 3.1 carious teeth per child. In 5500 children 1987 (41%) had carious teeth without enamel hypoplasia with a mean of 1.39 decayed teeth per child and this shows that the prevalence of caries in hypoplastic teeth was evident and was statistically significant.

To find out the nursing caries prevalence among the preschool children in Piparia Village, Vadodara, Gujarat.

All the 80 pre school children attending anganwadi were examined with a pretested semistructured self designed closed ended questionnaire and by using dmft index.

Chi square test & multiple logistic regression at 5% level of significance.

Prevalence of nursing caries was 26.25% with mean caries experience of 1.54. Untreated decayed teeth dominated the dmft score. Statistically significant association was found between weaning at a later age, frequency of consuming snacks and development of nursing caries lesion.

Nursing caries is linked with various factors like educational qualification of mother, weaning age, oral hygiene measures, snacking frequency etc.

The objective of the study was to evaluate the prevalence of oral mucosal changes (OML) in Eluru, Andhra Pradesh and to determine possible associations of OML with respect to age, gender and habits.

The study sample consisted of 3035 patients collected from outpatients seeking dental treatment in department of Oral Medicine and radiology. The subjects were interviewed by trained interviewers and underwent a clinical examination of the oral mucosa performed according to WHO guidelines. A specially prepared color atlas of OML was used for lesion recognition and confirmation.

The data obtained were tabulated and subjected to statistical analysis utilizing the SPSS (statistical package for the social sciences) soft ware version 10.0. Pearson chi-square test was applied to test the significance between mucosal changes with respect age, gender and habits.

The overall classification among 3035 samples showed 1042 cases presented with one or more mucosal changes/lesions/ conditions, which constituted a total of about 1489 lesions. Among 1489 lesions, 929 mucosal changes were either normal variants or developmental anomalies, 206 were traumatic lesions, 254 were tobacco induced, 22 were of infectious origin and 78 were miscellaneous conditions.

The overall mucosal changes noted in the study was 49.06% and the most prevalent lesions were linea alba, frictional keratosis and Fordyce granules. Mucosal changes were predominantly noted in males, in buccal mucosa and in the age group of 16-30 yrs.

A 22 year old man presented with pain arising from his carious lower left second molar. An Orthopantomogram (OPT) revealed an incidental finding of an odontome fused to an upper wisdom tooth, a finding that to the author's knowledge has never been previously reported. This case also illustrates the value of panoramic radiographs in identifying incidental pathology.

The study of root and root canal anatomy of molars in children is important for pediatric practice successfull. Normally the permanent mandibular first molar has two roots, one mesial and the other distal. Rarely an additional third root is seen, which is found distolingually and called as Radix Entomolaris. This extra root is typically smaller than the distobuccal root and is usually curved, requiring special attention when root canal treatment is being considered for such a tooth. The aim of the present paper is to present two cases of permanent mandibular first molars with an additional third root.

Sinus tract adjacent to teeth, or near the apex of any particular tooth, is usually considered to be of endodontic origin and root canal therapy is the primary treatment to achieve its healing; however, at times, it may be associated with periodontal lesion and then requires combined endodontic periodontal treatment. The present case had a sinus tract of combined orthodontic-periodontal origin, mimicking pulpal etiology. Such cases can possibly be diagnosed and treated only after careful evaluation of clinical features and radiographic findings.