This review assessing the impact of wearing a mouthguard on athletic performance included 41 studies involving 852 athletes. While the findings suggest some potential benefits for athletic performance the included studies are small, very hetrogeneous with only 7 studies being at low risk of bias. Consequently the findings should be interpreted very cautiously.
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This review of the influence of oral health on school performance and school attendance included 18 observational studies and suggests a significant relationship between poor dental health and scchool attendance and performance.
[read the full story...]This review of the effect of mouthguards on performance in athletes identified 15 small low quality studies. The findings suggest that made mouthguards does not interfere with sport performance but they should be interpreted cautiously.
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In her blog, Caroline De Brún considers a recently published report by the World Health Organization, comparing strengths and issues faced by primary care health systems in Europe.
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This new report from the National Audit Office considers the current status of out of hours GP services in England, based on data collected during 2013-2014. Although the report is focused on England, there may be lessons for commissioners in other health systems. Methods The report is based on : a web-based survey of CCGs (175 [read the full story…]
Produced by an expert task force of IMPRESS, this new guide on pulmonary rehabilitation services (PR) aims to answer the questions that most healthcare commissioners want answered. It supplements a Commissioning Pack for COPD due to be issued by the Department of Health England early in 2012. Providing clinical leadership to the NHS to stimulate [read the full story…]
An independent evaluation of the use of performance measures for accountability and quality improvement from RAND Corporation reports on how these are being used by a wide array of organizations in the USA. The availability of data from which to construct measures was the single most important factor cited as either facilitating or impeding their [read the full story…]
The NHS Operating Framework 2012/13 focuses on the new commissioning landscape. It lays out the planning, performance and financial requirements for NHS organisations in 2012/13 and the basis on which they will be held to account. This brief overview simply picks out the headlines. Commissioners will want to get into the detail of this annual [read the full story…]
