The evidence-based approach has become the mantra of health care and service delivery. But just what it means, whether it is feasible, how to build it and the outcome of its use are not well understood. The aims of this paper are to provide an overview of an evidence-based approach to the prevention of oral disease, to examine the assessment of clinical trial evidence, to examine emerging appro...

Before 1979, there were only 5 undergraduate dental schools in Iran with a total admission of 200 students per year, and only 2,000 dentists and about 50 specialists practicing in the country. Currently, there are 18 dental schools with a total admission of 750 undergraduate students, 5 postgraduate programs in 10 disciplines with a total of 100 students, more than 11,000 dentists (1 dentist pe...

This paper provides a review of the available evidence for traditional prosthodontic need determination and management strategies for older, partially dentate individuals, and compares it to the documented functional benefits of a more limited yet targeted approach to alleviating morphological shortfalls for this group of people, at the population level. The reasons for which the traditional to...

The insurmountable mass of literature and lectures that the modern practitioner is exposed to has created problems. The resolution of often contradictory information is not easy to discern. Evidence based dentistry presents guidelines to determine the validity of the results and whether they can be applied to clinical practice. This article introduces the reader to the basic principles to be us...

evidence-based dentistry (ebd) is very limitedly known in iran, and has been defined as an approach to oral healthcare that requires the judicious integration of systemic assessments of clinically relevant scientific evidences, related to patient’s history and oral and medical conditions, with dentist’s clinical expertise and patient’s treatment needs and preferences. (1-5) the ebd is a popular...

BACKGROUND A critical need exists for reliable warning markers of in-hospital life-threatening arrhythmias. We used a new quantitative method to track interlead heterogeneity of depolarization and repolarization to detect premonitory changes before ventricular tachycardia (VT) in hospitalized patients with acute decompensated heart failure. METHODS AND RESULTS Ambulatory ECGs (leads V(1), V(5...

The importance of evidence in teaching and in support of clinical decisions is well established in health care, including dentistry. Defence of clinical decisions increasingly requires reliable data or evidence to support the stance taken. Assistance in finding the best evidence comes from a variety of sources, including computerised databases, journals, continuing education meetings, and study...

It is important for clinicians to understand the type of clinical studies that appear in the literature and the inherent strengths and limitations of each study. The three possible alternative explanations, chance, bias, and confounding, must be considered for any research study. Thus, it is important to evaluate research studies critically in light of this discussion and not simply to summariz...

It is well known that smoking contributes to the development of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease, and there is weighty evidence that it has a considerable influence on oral health. Smoking has many negative effects on the mouth, including staining of teeth and dental restorations, reduction of the ability to smell and taste, and the development of oral diseases such as smoker’s palate, sm...