1,721,212 research outputs found
Tobacco use by adolescents and young adults: oral health effects and cessation strategies
No full textBackground: The use of smoking and smokeless tobacco worldwide has greatly increased in recent years, especially among adolescent boys and young men. Tobacco use can produce a wide range of negative effects on oral tissues, including periodontal tissue destruction and the onset of oral pre-malignant lesions. In the United States, major gains have been made to reduce smoking among adults. Similar gains, however, have not been realized with adolescents. In recent years, substantial interest has been directed to tobacco cessation studies with adolescents. The previously limited interest in adolescent cessation programs was attributable in large part to the mistaken assumptions that: (1) adolescent tobacco users were not dependent on nicotine and could stop at any time; (2) adolescents did not want to quit; and (3) adult tobacco cessation programs would be effective with adolescents. Oral health professionals should prevent tobacco use by adolescents and provide cessation counseling services or referral for appropriate treatment.
Objective: To review the epidemiology, health effects and cessation programs of tobacco use among adolescents and young adults.
Methods: Original papers, reviews and current guidelines on this subject, published in English from 2002 to 2007, were located in the MEDLINE/Pubmed database. Additional publications were obtained by searching the reference lists of retrieved studies.
Contents:
1) Tobacco use by adolescents and young adults: epidemiology
2) Effects of tobacco use (smoking and smokeless) on the oral health status of adolescents and young adults: incipient periodontitis, necrotizing ulcerative gingivitis, necrotizing ulcerative periodontitis, oral pre-malignant lesions, gingival recessions;
3) Tobacco cessation programs for adolescents and young adults: the role of oral health professionals;
4) Future directions in research
Statistical study of peak overlapping in multicomponent chromatograms: importance of the retention pattern
No full textA general method is reported for evaluating the statistical degree of overlapping (SDO) in a multicomponent chromatogram, whose retention pattern is known and described by the frequency function of interdistances between subsequent single component peaks (interdistance model, IM). The content of SDO is the expected numbers of singlet, doublet, triplet, etc., peaks, as a function of the number of components, the separation performance and the IM. The proposed method is exploited in practice for three cases of IMs: gamma, normal and uniform, which are known to represent a wide variety of cases. Two different approaches are presented and discussed: analytical expression and simulation computation, according to whether the IM can be analytically integrated or not. The advantages and differences of the two approaches are considered, even in the case of negative interdistances (normal case). A real case of chromatographic separation of a multicomponent mixture, composed of polychlorinated biphenyls, is also exploited. The separation requirements for obtaining a given separation goal are investigated and the relevance of the IM type in determining the overlapping pattern is proved. The basic underlying hypothesis of the present treatment is the stationarity of the component distribution along the chromatogram. Means to check this hypothesis are also reported. © 1995
Assessment of tobacco dependence curricula in Italian dental hygiene schools
No full textThe aim of this study was to assess the level of tobacco dependence education offered by Italian dental hygiene programs. A fifty-question survey was mailed to the thirty-one active public and private dental hygiene programs in Italy during the 2008-09 academic year. The survey assessed faculty confidence in teaching tobacco treatment, which courses contained tobacco dependence content, the number of minutes spent on specific content areas, and the level of clinical competence that dental hygiene graduates should be able to demonstrate. Surveys were returned by sixteen programs for a response rate of 52 percent. Respondents indicated tobacco dependence education was included in clinic or clinic seminar (56 percent), periodontics (44 percent), oral pathology (31 percent), and prevention (19 percent). All programs reported including the effects of tobacco on general and oral diseases in courses. However, more in-depth topics received less curriculum time; these included tobacco
treatment strategies (63 percent) and discussion of cessation medications (31 percent). Interestingly, 62 percent of the respondents indicated they expected dental hygiene graduates to demonstrate a tobacco treatment competency level of a moderate intervention
or higher (counseling, discussion of medications, follow-up) rather than a brief intervention in which patients are advised to quit then referred to a quitline. The results of this study indicated that Italian dental hygiene students are not currently receiving adequate
instruction in tobacco treatment techniques nor are they being adequately assessed. This unique overview of Italian dental hygiene tobacco dependence education provides a basis for further discussion towards a national competency-based curriculum
The role of oral health professionals in tobacco cessation
No full textTobacco is the major independent risk factor for the development of oral cancer and potentially malignant lesions. It is also involved in the pathogenesis of periodontal disease. The members of the dental team can play an effective role in tobacco preventing and cessation as they provide preventive and therapeutic services to a basically healthy population on a regular basis.
In this paper, the authors present specific strategies to guide oral health professionals (i.e. dentist and dental hygienist) providing smoking cessation interventions.
The “Five A’s” strategic approach represents a brief and effective protocol for smoking cessation that members of dental team can use with all patients in their office practice. This protocol involves asking each patient about tobacco use, advising users to quit, assessing their willingness to make a quit attempt, assisting them with the quitting process and arranging follow-up to prevent relapse. Intensive interventions, more effective than brief ones, can be further adopted with any smokers willing to make a quit attempt. Patients not ready to quit may be motivated to make a quit attempt by employing the “Five R’s” approach. Dental professionals can encourage their patients to identify reasons why quitting is personally relevant and the oral health risks of tobacco use; dental professionals can also rewards that patients can experience from quitting and help the patients to identify roadblocks to quitting. All patients attempting to quit should also be encouraged to use the pharmacotherapy agents.
The “Stages of Change” model may be helpful to assist the clinician in assessing readiness to make a quit attempt. Tobacco users are categorised as belonging at any one time to one of five stages: Pre-contemplation (not thinking about stopping); Contemplation stopping; Preparing to stop; Action-making a quit attempt; Maintaining abstinence or relapsing. The intention is to help tobacco users move through the stages by using different interventions at different stages.
Growing evidence supports the efficacy of smoking cessation counselling by oral health professionals. Dentists and dental hygienists, therefore, should be trained on smoking cessation counselling and dental offices should incorporate this service into routine patient care. While the approach to smoking intervention provides a useful framework from which to begin, special considerations need to be given when treating various categories of tobacco users such as smokeless tobacco users, adolescents and wome
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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