Friday 29 June 2012

June 2012 EBD Journal out

The latest issue of the EBD journal is out. 



Elliot Abt from Chicago digests the study that reckoned bite-wings could cause menangioma - and spits it out in disgust. The commentary covers a number of the problems with case-control studies and reporting bias, which is an education.
There's a commentary on a systematic review that asks if asthma is associated with increased caries risk and concludes that the evidence for a link is of low quality.
A commentary on a Cochrane Review of one-to-one dietary interventions in the dental setting concludes that this can work but the evidence relates mostly to studies looking at changing fruit / vegetable and alcohol consumption than sugar intake. The original review was co-authored by one of my colleagues, which is very gratifying!
There are three articles in this issue written by Queen Mary staff: Dr John Buchanan writes about a study using a tongue protector for patients with burning mouth and Dr Simon Critchlow comments on a review of ceramic inlays. And I have written a commentary on a systematic review of ART failure rates. 
Don't forget that you may need to sign in with your institutional access to read the articles. 



Thursday 21 June 2012

New Centre for Evidence-Based Dentistry site goes live


CEBD

The Centre for Evidence-Based Dentistry has revamped its website, which has gone live today.

This is a great resource for anyone wanting to develop their EBD skills. I thoroughly recommend the site and congratulate Derek Richards and the web design team for putting it together.

Saturday 16 June 2012

Erythromycin and statins

Although probably not a first line antibiotic for most dental infections, erythromycin is in our armamentarium as dentists. I was surprised therefore to read of potential problems for patients taking statins - common drugs used for reducing cholesterol to reduce risk of heart attack. Because of the way they are metabolised taking erythromycin can raise the levels of statin.

Is there an interaction between erythromycin and statins? - NeLM

Wednesday 13 June 2012

Searching for patient information

If you read this blog regularly or have scanned the entries you'll see there's quite a bit about searching for evidence and resources to help us do that. What I haven't paid much attention to is helping patients find reliable information relevant to them.

Of course, if they feel up to it, they can search the Cochrane Library and read the 'plain language' conclusions that are helpfully part of each review. But if they want some more basic background knowledge there are resources that may be more reliable than Google.

PRODIGY One is Prodigy, which was formerly the Clinical Knowledge Summaries (CKS) site, which was part of the UK's National Health Service. Here patients can select a tab for 'Patient Info' and this links through to leaflets on a myriad of medical and dental topics.

MedlinePlus Trusted Health Information for You The other resource is Medline Plus, which is the US equivalent and allows patients to link through to leaflets from a variety of sources.

Having patients better understand the aetiology, prevention, prognosis and treatment of their conditions is helpful, I believe, on several fronts. Firstly it helps go some way to improving 'informed' consent, something I am inherently dubious of because of knowing how informed a patient is or needs to be to make 'informed' consent. Secondly it simply helps improve communication and may mean that patients respond better, for example, to preventive advice or to treatment suggestions. Finally, patients informed by more reliable information may be more likely to accept an evidence-based approach to their care since, hopefully, the resource offers higher level evidence than mere opinion and here-say.

If I was in practice now I would probably stick a link to one or both of these on my website. It may improve a practice's image as a patient-focused place as well as directing patients to helpful information.

Wednesday 6 June 2012

Still experimenting

Please excuse this experimenting of mine. I had some fun recording a lecture in our elearning suite today and just wanted to put it out there...like a kid with brand new toy...


This lecture will be the beginning of a series of short lectures on EBD beginning with why we might want to use it through to developing the tools. Yes - it means many more hours of me standing in front of a screen on my own in room talking to a virtual class....it's what students want we're told!

Feedback, as ever, is much appreciated.