Pharmacy Asthma Care Program. Final Report.

The purpose of the project is to identify the role and value of professional services that community pharmacy can provide to people who are at risk of asthma or present with the disease. A literature review has been conducted to inform the development of a Pharmacy Asthma Care Module to pilot in the project

Mineral trioxide aggregate as an alternative treatment for intruded permanent teeth with root resorption and incomplete apex formation

A case of extensive crown fracture associated with intrusion of the permanent maxillary central incisors in an 8-year-old boy is reported. The treatment of both injured teeth included attempts of apexification and arrest of root resorption with calcium hydroxide. After 8 months of the trauma, there was no calcified barrier formation in the apex. Mineral trioxide aggregate (MTA) was then used as a filling material. At 15-month follow up, the teeth were asymptomatic and correctly sealed, the external inflammatory root resorption had stopped, and the radiolucent image had disappeared, which meant the initial healing of the periapical lesion. MTA may be considered as an alternative option for the treatment of traumatized and immature permanent teeth.

Thermal/mechanical simulation and laboratory fatigue testing of an alternative yttria tetragonal zirconia polycrystal core-veneer all-ceramic layered crown design

This study evaluated the stress levels at the core layer and the veneer layer of zirconia crowns (comprising an alternative core design vs. a standard core design) under mechanical/thermal simulation, and subjected simulated models to laboratory mouth-motion fatigue. The dimensions of a mandibular first molar were imported into computer-aided design (CAD) software and a tooth preparation was modeled. A crown was designed using the space between the original tooth and the prepared tooth. The alternative core presented an additional lingual shoulder that lowered the veneer bulk of the cusps. Finite element analyses evaluated the residual maximum principal stresses fields at the core and veneer of both designs under loading and when cooled from 900 degrees C to 25 degrees C. Crowns were fabricated and mouth-motion fatigued, generating master Weibull curves and reliability data. Thermal modeling showed low residual stress fields throughout the bulk of the cusps for both groups. Mechanical simulation depicted a shift in stress levels to the core of the alternative design compared with the standard design. Significantly higher reliability was found for the alternative core. Regardless of the alternative configuration, thermal and mechanical computer simulations showed stress in the alternative core design comparable and higher to that of the standard configuration, respectively. Such a mechanical scenario probably led to the higher reliability of the alternative design under fatigue.

Intralesional injection of triamcinolone hexacetonide as an alternative treatment for central giant-cell granuloma in 21 cases

Central giant-cell granulomas are benign, but occasionally aggressive, lesions that traditionally have been treated surgically. 21 cases of central giant-cell granuloma of the jaw were treated with intralesional injection of corticosteroids. The treatment protocol adopted was intralesional injection of 20 mg/ml triamcinolone hexacetonide diluted in an anaesthetic solution of 2% lidocaine/epinephrine 1:200,000 in the proportion 1:1; 1.0 ml of the solution was infiltrated for every 1 cm(3) of radiolucid area of the lesion, totalling 6 biweekly applications. Ten patients had aggressive lesions and 11 nonaggressive. Two patients showed a negative response to the treatment and underwent surgical resection, 4 showed a moderate response and 15 a good response. 8 of the 19 who had a moderate-to-good response to the drug treatment underwent osteoplasty to reestablish facial aesthetics. In these cases, only mature or dysplastic bone was observed, with the presence or absence of rare giant multinucleated cells. The advantages of this therapy are its less-invasive nature, the probable lower cost to the patient, lower risk and the ability to treat the lesion surgically in the future, if necessary.