Anodontia

A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted on 48 dentists. They were chosen from different area of Ha’il, Saudi Arabia, to study the attitudes and awareness of the basics of orthodontic therapy. The distribution of the study was conducted through online surveys. The duration of the study was five months, starting on 28 October 2019. The answers to the questions were either yes or no. For both knowledge and attitude, the yes answers were coded by one, while the no answers coded by zero. The inclusion and exclusion criteria are given in Table 1.
The study was conducted by a questionnaire containing 21 questions (Figure 1) divided into two sections: section A contained 13 questions about awareness of orthodontic practice, and section B comprised 8 questions about attitudes toward orthodontic practice taken from a previous study¹. The questionnaire was planned to study the attitudes and awareness towards the basics of orthodontic therapy of the general dental practitioners and non-orthodontic specialists. The internal consistency of the questionnaire was also tested via Cronbach’s alpha test on the SPSS v. 25.
Section A: Survey for the awareness of orthodontic practice:
In total, 13 queries were defined to gauge the information on general dental practitioner and non-orthodontics specialists. The inquiries were comprised of their insights with respect to facial appearance, mixed orthodontic treatment in mixed dentition organization, the beginning period of orthodontic treatment, practical treatment, habits, extraction of teeth for orthodontic reasons, proclined teeth, retainers, and anchorage. For scoring, the yes answer was given a score of “one”, and “zero” was offered for the response of no.
Section B: Survey to consider attitudes toward orthodontic practice:
These 8 questions were likewise designed with a yes/no pattern, and scoring was comprised of a score of “one” for a yes answer and a score of “zero” for a no answer. In these questions, the plan was to examine attitudes toward orthodontic treatment, such as offering data tolerant about malocclusion when patient seeks the other dental treatment, assessment of orthodontists, diagnostic orthodontic techniques, orthodontic treatment in missing teeth, orthognathic surgical procedures, and orthodontic therapy in patients with periodontal issues.
The Cronbach alpha value for the 13 awareness questions was “0.9” and for the 8 attitude 8 questions was “0.83”, which fell into the acceptable category.
The survey was distributed randomly to general dental practitioners and non-orthodontic specialists through individual online surveys and through personal contacts, phone, and email.

This cross-sectional study was conducted on all children diagnosed with lymphohematopoietic malignancies that referred to Amirkola Children’s Hospital from 2011 to 2018 and was approved by the Ethics Committee of Babol University of Medical Sciences with the code of IR.MUBABOL.REC.1397.021. All parents were informed of the study procedure. All patients were examined by a dentist and their clinical symptoms including gingival bleeding, petechiae, ecchymosis, gingival enlargement, mucositis, ulcer and swelling were recorded in a checklist and then, the patients were referred to an oral radiologist to perform panoramic imaging. The criteria for prescribing panoramic radiography was to have at least one decayed tooth in each quadrant.The radiographs were taken by a Cranex D (Soredex, Finland) with the following exposure attributes: KV = (57-85), mA = 10 mA, t = 11ms. The radiographs were observed by an oral radiologist and a pediatric dentist in a room with gleamy and indirect light on an LCD Flatron LG E1941 19-inch monitor (LG Electronics, Seoul, Korea). All children treated for at least six months were included in the study. The children with congenital dental anomalies and systemic diseases like diabetes and renal diseases were excluded.
The radiographs were analyzed for dental anomalies and bone abnormalities. The dental anomalies included microdontia, taurodontism, dental agenesis, root stunting and early closure of the apex. Jaw bone abnormalities composed of partial or complete loss of lamina dura, thickness of lamina dura, disappearance of the cortical border of the mandibular canal, disappearance of the cortical border of the maxillary sinus, periosteal reaction, transposition of the dental crypt and generalized loss of periodontal ligament. Mandibular cortical width (MCW) was measured on both sides, below the mental foramen, parallel to the long axis of the mandible and tangential to the inferior border; a line was drawn on the image using the Scanora software. Perpendicular to this tangent intersecting the inferior border of the mental foramen, a line was constructed along which the upper and lower delimitation points of the inferior mandibular cortex were located. Then, the MCW was measured. ^{[12 (link)]} Mandibular cortical index (MCI) is a way to evaluate osteopenia and osteoporosis in the cortical area of the mandible using panoramic radiographs. In this technique, the inferior cortex on both sides of the mandible, distal to the mental foramen is classified into three groups according to the following criteria:
1. C1: The endosteal margin of the cortex is even and sharp on both sides of the mandible, which is considered normal bone status.
2. C2: The endosteal margin has resorptive cavities with one to three layers of cortical residues on one or both sides, which is considered osteopenia.
3. C3: The endosteal margin consists of thick cortical residues and is clearly porous, which is considered severe osteopenia or osteoporosis. ^{[13 (link), 14 (link)]}Data were analyzed by SPSS 25 using chi-square, Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney statistical tests. A p-value <0.05 was considered statistically significant.