EVALUATING THE PERSPECTIVES OF MALAYSIAN GENERAL DENTAL PRACTITIONERS ON DENTAL IMPRESSION TECHNIQUES FOR INDIRECT RESTORATION: QUESTIONNAIRE VALIDATION AND PILOT STUDY Accurate impressions with high dimensional stability for indirect restoration fabrications are crucial. The conventional impressions technique has multiple steps and requires material manipulation, which has an inevitable degree of error. On the other hand, intraoral scanners (IOS) are currently used as digital impression techniques and have better acquisition, precision, cost and time efficiency. Malaysian GDPs have varying demographic backgrounds, exposure, experience, and preference for dental impression techniques. This study aims to validate and assess the reliability of the twenty-item questionnaire regarding the ‘Malaysian General Dental Practitioners’ (GDP’s) perspective on dental impression techniques for indirect restoration. A twenty-item questionnaire is categorised into four sections: (1) Demographic Characteristics of General Dental Practitioners, (2) Questions for Conventional Impression technique users, (3) Questions for Digital Impression technique users, and (4) Questions for both Digital and Conventional Impression Technique users. The questionnaire is assessed by three experts measured for its Content Validity Index (CVI) prior to distribution. A cross-sectional pilot study is then carried out with a sample size of 30 participants. The descriptive data are compared using a Chi-square test based on the type of impression techniques and preference variables. Fifteen items in the questionnaire had an I-CVI score of 1, while five items had a score of 0.67. The S-CVI/Ave value was 0.92, while the S-CVI/UA value was 0.76. Thirty responses were collected in the pilot study. There were seven respondents who are digital technique users and 23 who are conventional technique users. All respondents are interested in learning or improving their knowledge and skills in IOS (100%). 15 out of 20 items in the questionnaire have good content validity with I-CVI values of 1. The S-CVI/Ave also reflected acceptable content validity with a value of 0.92. Five items from the questionnaire yielded I-CVI = 0.67, and the S-CVI/UA value showed 0.76, indicating unsatisfactory content validity levels. All questions were retained for the pilot study. The questionnaire can be improved for content validity by removing or modifying questions to make them fit, correlate more to the study, and achieve a higher S-CVI value. On the other hand, the pilot study concluded that most respondents use conventional impression techniques but favour using intraoral scanners when fabricating indirect restoration.

ABSTRACT In the management of periodontitis patients, periodontal risk assessment (PRA) tool is currently being applied during periodontal review (PR). However, an assessment of risk profiles during examination and diagnosis (E&D) may and would effectively assess and diagnose patients’ periodontal conditions, provide personalised treatment planning, and render an enhanced patient care through periodontal management by risk assessment (PEMBRA). From a retrospective study on selected records of 81 patients treated for chronic periodontitis, the PRA profiles of the patients were evaluated during E&D and two to three months after completion of nonsurgical periodontal therapy (NSPT) during PR. The results were analysed using SPSS version 24 for descriptive statistics. On E&D, the patients presented with 25.9% localised and 74.1% generalised chronic periodontitis. Of these, 2.5% of low-risk patients on E&D increased to 21% during PR signifying an improvement after the treatment. However, the medium-risk patients have a slight increase from 32% to 35%, and patients with a high risk of 62% were reduced to 43%. The improvement of the risk profiles for both low and high-risk groups was mostly contributed by the reduction in the plaque score, percentages of bleeding on probing (BOP), and probing pocket depth (PPD) ≥ 5 mm. This evidence-based evaluation of PRA tool during E&D and PR is important for PEMBRA as it encouraged the clinicians to adopt periodontal management through basic periodontal examination, detailed periodontal charting, radiographic interpretation, tooth per tooth prognosis, diagnosis, and targeted NSPT.
Risk Assessment ; Periodontal Diseases -- diagnosis ; Dental Instruments

Introduction: Numerous studies have examined both the effect of caries and dental care under general anaesthesia affecting children and children with special needs, but there is still scant information on the relationship between both classes. Thus this project is aimed i) to compare oral health-related quality of life in children and children with special needs undergoing dental care under general anaesthesia (GA) and ii) To compare the impact on oral health-related quality of life in children and children with special needs. Methods: Forty-six children (25 normal children, 21 children with special needs) are recruited. Participating parents completed a brief version of the Perceptions Questionnaire (P-CPQ) and Family Impact Scale (FIS) before the treatment and subsequent follow-up appointments (4 weeks to 8 weeks). Oral symptoms, social health, psychology, functional limitation, and family effect ratings, the mean, standard deviations, and statistical differences between groups were analysed. Results: 52.2% of both parent groups rated the oral health status of their children as low before GA, and it improved considerably, with 69.6% of parents rating post-operatively as healthy. The most recorded impacts at baseline were pain, discomfort, often annoyed and angry among children and parents feeling guilty and upset due to the condition of the child. Conclusion: Oral rehabilitation under GA leads to the immediate improvement of oral health, mental, and social quality among the children in both groups. However, for parents of children with special needs, despite the effort to eradicate dental-related issues, the overall quality of life shows no significant improvements.

Background: Many questionnaires have been developed to measure dental anxiety andfear. Among them is the Index of Dental Anxiety and Fear Scale (IDAF-4C+), which consists of adental anxiety and fear module (IDAF-4C), a phobia module (IDAF-P) and a stimulus module(IDAF-S). The objective of this research was to report the adaptation and validation of the IDAF-4C+ for Malaysian secondary school children.Methods: This was a cross‑sectional validation study. The original English version of theIDAF-4C+ was translated into Malay, back-translated, and then sent for content validation via anexpert validation and face validation by the target student population. Three hundred and seventyquestionnaires were then distributed among 16-year-old school children. Confirmatory factoranalysis (CFA) was conducted for the IDAF-4C module using a bootstrapped maximum likelihoodestimator. Spearman’s rank correlation was used to assess the relationship between the IDAF‑Sand IDAF-4C modules. Intraclass correlation (ICC) was used to determine the stability of theIDAF-S and IDAF-4C modules, while kappa values were used for the IDAF-P module.Results: The response rate was 86.5% for CFA and 76.9% for stability. CFA showed theexistence of only one factor with a reliability estimate of 0.921, obtained via Raykov’s procedure.All items in the IDAF-S module were significantly correlated with the IDAF-4C module (P <0.001). The IDAF-S and IDAF-4C modules were stable, as determined via a two-way mixed modelwith absolute agreement, a single measure and a Case 3 ICC (A, 1). The IDAF-P module showedsatisfactory stability, as assessed via kappa values.Conclusion: The Malay version of the IDAF-4C+ is valid and reliable in measuring dentalanxiety and fear among Malaysian secondary school children.