Birth – 18 years.
There is good evidence for the effectiveness of fissure sealants in the prevention of caries (Dental Elf 8th April 2013) and some evidence for its use in the treatment of carious lesions. There is also evidence for the effectiveness of partial rather complete caries removal (Dental Elf 13th Apr – 2014).The aim of this study [read the full story…]
I was a terrible sleeper as a child. I remember lying awake on one particular occasion because I had read a book about space and thought that the sun might swallow up the earth. I was intrigued then, when I was asked to review a paper for the Mental Elf about parasomnias and childhood psychotic [read the full story…]
This review aims to assess the role of the various characteristics of orthodontic brackets (material, slot size, ligation type, etc) and their combination with specific wires on their clinical effectiveness and associated side-effects during fixed-appliance orthodontic treatment. Searches were conducted in Medline, Cochrane Library, Biomed Central, BBO including LILACS, Ind Med, Sceilo, Clinical trials.gov, Conference [read the full story…]
How many children develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after a traumatic experience such as an assault, a car crash, war or disaster? William Yule, one of the godfathers of child traumatic stress research, once pointed out that rates reported in separate studies varied from 0 to 100%. So what is on average the rate [read the full story…]
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is unfortunately a relatively common condition in children and adolescents. Depression is estimated to affect 2% of pre-pubertal children and 5-8% of adolescents (Son et al, 2000). As you might expect, depression has a significant negative impact on the development, functioning and risk for suicide in individuals affected, as well as [read the full story…]
Is it possible to work out which of two adolescents sitting before you complaining of unhappiness, which one will go home and sleep it off and which will go on to develop an episode of major depression? Has the biological revolution in psychiatry finally come to fruition with a useful biomarker for making treatment decisions? [read the full story…]
The aim of this study was to compare 24-month pulp health outcomes of partial caries removal (PCR) and total caries removal (TCR) with composite restoration in primary molars. Children (3–8 years), in good general health and amenable to treatment, with at least one molar with acute, deep carious lesion into dentine were included. The teeth [read the full story…]
Reading instruction was once a topic guaranteed to ignite passionate debate among teachers, mostly between proponents of phonics instruction and supporters of whole-language approaches. Although this particular controversy has become less heated in recent years, with many endorsing a hybrid or mixed-methods approach, there remains a great deal of interest in the relative merits of [read the full story…]
The link between external influences such as family and neighbourhood experiences and young people’s mental health outcomes has been extensively commented on in the literature. While it is more common for studies to focus on the individual or family level, looking at things from a wider perspective is interesting especially from a public mental health [read the full story…]
Sadly caries remains a significant public health problem across the world, particularly in children. The aim of this study was to assess the cost-effectiveness of caries treatment and prevention strategies in the Netherlands. The study was conducted alongside a randomised controlled trial (RCT) evaluating the effects of two caries prevention strategies compared with regular dental [read the full story…]
