Jude A. Fabiano

Coexistent concerns: assessing the social and health needs of dental clinic patients.

Abstract University dental clinic professionals identified increasing numbers of patients with complex problems and generated 2 research questions: (1) Are there significant health and social concerns within the dental clinic population that indicate the need for high-risk screening and social work services?; and (2) How do age, gender, and income influence health and social concerns in this population? This exploratory descriptive cross-sectional study employed a brief self-report survey in a clinic waiting area. Logistic regression was used to understand the influence of age, gender and income on the existence of specific concerns. Results indicate that caregiving, finances and health are issues for 1/3 of the participants and that 44% endorsed 2 or more concerns. These findings were used to develop a routine high-risk screening tool for dental clinic patients and social work services within the clinic; they suggest that community clinics with dental services are an important place for identifying complex unmet needs.

Empathy in Dentistry: How Attitudes and Interaction With Older Adults Make a Difference.

The development of empathy and positive attitudes are essential elements of professional education. This study explored the nature of empathy and its association with attitudes about, and exposure to older patients in a sample of dental students. Students completed an adapted version of the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (JSPE), the Aging Semantic Differential (ASD) and answered questions about their exposure to older people. Factor analysis was used to identify four factors: (1) Empathy is Valuable, (2) Empathy is Demonstrated, (3) Empathy is not Influential, and (4) Empathy is Difficult to Accomplish. Higher empathy scores were related to the ASD subscale attitude of acceptability of aging and to greater exposure to older adults outside of clinical practice. There were no demographic predictors of higher empathy scores.

Infrared spectroscopic analysis of restorative composite materials' surfaces and their saline extracts

This study aims at finding out if multiple attenuated internal reflection-infrared (MAIR-IR) spectroscopic analysis can be used as a tool to differentiate commercial resin composite brands and to find out if different resin composites will have different abilities of leaching materials that are cytotoxic to human gingival fibroblasts (HGFs) Tooth-colored resin fillings have become increasingly popular as restorative materials, which make it important to differentiate the commercial brands for forensic and biological purposes. Fourteen resin composite brands were used in the study. MAIR-IR spectroscopic analysis was used for surface characterization of the organic and inorganic parts of the resin composite samples which were studied as is and after 2 weeks of saline incubation. IR spectroscopy was also done on the saline extracts to find out if different resin composite materials would have different leaching abilities. The saline extracts were also used for the viability testing of HGF cell cultures. One-way analysis of variance test statistics was used to analyze the results. It was found that the resin composite brands have different spectra after saline soaking. It was also found that these resin composite brands possess different leaching abilities with regard to the amount and type of materials and different cytotoxic effects, which were found to be threshold dependent, meaning there is a critical or threshold value of leaching material at or above which the toxic effect will be significant and below which there is no toxic effect. Therefore, IR spectroscopy might be considered as a useful tool for dental resin composite characterization. However, more oral simulating environmental testing methods, different surface characterization methods, and more cell viability testing methods and assays must be considered for more specific results which relate more to the behavior of these dental resin composites in the oral environment.