Background: Dental malocclusion is a highly prevalent health condition in adolescence. Patients seek treatment primarily for aesthetic reasons. Therapy benefits are regarded, in the first place, to be psychosocial in nature.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCommunity Dent Health
June 2010
Objective: The aim of this study was to develop a measure of childhood information learning experiences related to dental anxiety according to Rachmnan's theory of fear acquisition entitled "Dental Information Learning History Questionnaire (DILHQ)" and to determine its test quality with regard to factorial validity, reliability, divergent, discriminant, and predictive validity.
Method: Sample 1 included 228 dental patients, answering a 17-item-pool of the DILHQ, the Dental Anxiety Scale (DAS: Corah, 1969), and the Self-Consciousness Scale by Fenigstein et al. (1975).
Community Dent Oral Epidemiol
June 2008
Objectives: The aim of this study was to develop an instrument measuring core concerns about dental treatment guided by Reiss' expectancy theory of fear. This would include the content domains of injury, somatic reaction and interpersonal concerns, to study the underlying factorial structure, and to determine the test quality of the resulting subscales.
Methods: A total of 555 regular dental patients answered the item pool.
Objective: To investigate whether the oral health of young male adults was related to (1) the degree of self-perceived malocclusion, (2) the degree of experienced negative psychosocial impact of dental esthetics, and (3) the history of orthodontic treatment and its duration.
Materials And Methods: The study subjects were 470 male naval recruits undergoing a routine dental health checkup. They answered the Perception of Occlusion Scale (POS) and Negative Impact of Dental Aesthetics Scale (NIDAS).
A novel program suite was implemented for the functional interpretation of high-throughput gene expression data based on the identification of Gene Ontology (GO) nodes. The focus of the analysis lies on the interpretation of microarray data from prokaryotes. The three well established statistical methods of the threshold value-based Fisher's exact test, as well as the threshold value-independent Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Student's t-test were employed in order to identify the groups of genes with a significantly altered expression profile.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCommunity Dent Oral Epidemiol
April 2006
Objectives: The personality disposition to anxiety sensitivity refers to beliefs about negative consequences of bodily arousal. The concept has recently been successfully applied in research on chronic pain conditions. The present study investigated whether anxiety sensitivity interacts with dental fear to increase expected and experienced pain during routine dental treatment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe aim of this study was to develop a psychometric instrument for assessment of orthodontic-specific aspects of quality of life. The study subjects, 194 young adults aged 18-30 years, were interviewed using a pool of 23 items dealing with the psychosocial impact of dental aesthetics. Self- and interviewer-rating of the dental aesthetic appearance of each subject were carried out using the Aesthetic Component (AC) of the Index of Orthodontic Treatment Need (IOTN).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAm J Orthod Dentofacial Orthop
October 2005
Introduction: The aim of this study was to investigate whether young adults with varying dental esthetics and histories of orthodontic treatment also differ in oral-health attitudes, preventive behaviors, and self-perceived oral health.
Methods: The sample comprised 298 young adults, 18 to 30 years old, with at least 13 years of primary and secondary school education. The subjects were asked to complete questionnaires dealing with various measures related to oral-health attitudes, preventive behaviors, and perceptions of oral health.
Purpose: Previous studies investigating associations between patient personality traits and complaints related to wearing dental prostheses have been inconclusive. From the perspective of cognitive behavioral theory, the current study investigated whether pain sensitivity, body consciousness, and somatization affected the oral health of patients wearing removable dentures.
Materials And Methods: Eighty-eight patients were supplied with removable partial and complete dentures.
Objectives: Previous research on relations between life stress and periodontal conditions was often based on indicators of periodontal destruction history and stimulus-specific measures of life stress. The present study was undertaken to compare patients showing different degrees of gingival sulcus bleeding with patients without signs of bleeding, using an instrument measuring cognitive impacts of events and assessing reported symptoms of depression and somatization. Additionally the patient groups were compared with regard to dental status and dental visiting behaviour.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: To date only few studies have been reported on the effect of multidisciplinary inpatient treatment on pain experience in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Aims of the present research were: to asses the development of different pain qualities at the beginning, at the end of treatment and at a follow-up three months later in a RA-patient sample as a whole, to determine statistically and clinically significant changes on individual base, and to study pain coping behaviors as predictive and pain-change associated variables.
Methods: Subjects were 66 patients with a diagnosis of RA.
A prevailing hypothesis suggests that exaggerated pain expectations in dentally anxious and pain-sensitive patients might usually be disconfirmed by a lower level of pain experienced during treatment. The present study was conducted to investigate whether this contention also holds during stressful dental procedures. Patients reporting high and low levels of dental fear and of pain sensitivity were compared in their expected and experienced pain and in the concordance between the two measures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe aim of the present study was to explore the putative relationship between dental aesthetics and oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL), taking into consideration the potential direct and moderating influence of private and public self-consciousness. The subjects of this cross-sectional survey were 148 university students. Dental aesthetics were assessed by means of the aesthetic component (AC) of the Index of Orthodontic Treatment Need (IOTN).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPsychother Psychosom Med Psychol
December 2002
Unlabelled: Various studies suggest that social stress and cognitive dysfunction contribute to the development of psychiatric disorders. Their roles as moderators and mediators of recovery have rarely been studied. Aim of the present research was to investigate 1.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDuring the course of treatment orthodontic patients frequently endure a number of functional complaints and are anxious about their appearance. The aims of this longitudinal study were to follow the progress of patients' adaptation to discomfort, to elucidate the putative relationship between the type of appliance worn and functional and social discomfort experienced, to study potential predictability by their attitude to treatment and to evaluate the effects of discomfort as predictors of patients' compliance. Eighty-four patients undergoing either removable, functional, or fixed appliance treatment monitored their complaints during the first 7 days of treatment and rated them retrospectively 14 days, and 3 and 6 months after appliance insertion.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOrthodontic treatment is occasionally a discomfort to patients, due to pain or functional restrictions. In this context, several retrospectively planned studies were performed in the 1980s, but correlations between different aspects of patient discomfort were not investigated. The present study aimed at examining and structuring the psychogenic dimensions of patient discomfort.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAm J Orthod Dentofacial Orthop
December 1998
Orthodontic patients experience pain and discomfort to a varying degree during the course of treatment. The aims of the present investigation were to follow the progress of adaptation after insertion of new appliances and to study the relationships between the type of appliance worn and pain or discomfort experienced, between pain sensations and attitude toward the treatment and their effects on patients' compliance. Pain and discomfort experienced by 84 patients undergoing orthodontic treatment, their attitude toward the treatment, and compliance were assessed 7 days, 14 days, 6 weeks, 3 months, and 6 months after appliance insertion, using specially designed protocols, questionnaires, and rating scales.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFractures of the elbow joint are quite rare compared with the total incidence of injuries to the extremities. However, elbow fractures often result in significant disability. Therefore in a retrospective study, we have evaluated criteria that are of prognostic value for late functional outcome.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDepressive syndromes are, with dementia, the most frequent psychiatric disorders in the elderly. The etiology of depressive syndromes can be reactive, endogenous, and neurotic as well as organic. Recent studies could show, that about 60% of the elderly patients clearly improve under treatment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: A review of the literature suggests that patients with tension headache do not differ from normals as much as from each other in psychological traits. The aim of the present study was to identify psychological subtypes of tension headache patients.
Method: The subjects were 130 inpatients with a diagnosis of recurrent tension headache who were treated in a pain clinic.
Gen Hosp Psychiatry
March 1994
The case of a woman who suffered from hepatic encephalopathy is described. The psychiatric symptoms presented first as a delirium, changing into a manic syndrome. As the neurotoxic direct fraction of bilirubin was greater than 100 times normal, increasing and decreasing in a parallel fashion with the psychiatric symptoms, direct bilirubin is assumed to play a role in the pathogenesis of this case.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPsychother Psychosom Med Psychol
February 1994
Ankylosing spondylitis - (AS-)patients are reported being characterized by marked ego strength and a stable personality. The aim of the present study was to investigate if they can be differentiated into subgroups which suggest different indications for training psychological skills to cope with their disease. Constructs which were thought to be relevant for psychological pain treatment were: disease activity, irrationality, positive and negative self-communication, stress-reactions, and disease impacts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci
June 1994
There is increasing evidence that the neurodegenerative processes in Alzheimer's disease (AD) may be related to alterations in calcium homeostasis and that these metabolic changes are not necessarily restricted to the central nervous system. However, previous studies investigating [Ca2+]i in fibroblasts, lymphoblasts, platelets and lymphocytes of AD patients gave inconclusive results, since increase, decrease and no alteration in [Ca2+]i were found in AD patients compared with controls. With respect to the importance of establishing altered Ca2+ homeostasis in peripheral cells, we have investigated [Ca2+]i in circulating mononuclear cells of patients with AD, multi-infarct dementia, age-associated memory impairment and healthy controls.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPsychoneuroendocrinology
August 1994
Noradrenergic mechanisms have been involved in the pathogenesis of Gilles de la Tourette Syndrome (GTS). Since the central alpha 2 adrenergic agonist clonidine is widely used as a therapeutic agent in GTS, the present study aimed at assessing whether GH release after clonidine, representing central alpha 2-adrenergic receptor sensitivity, was altered in GTS. After administration of 2 micrograms/kg body weight clonidine, the GH response was examined in nine drug-free, alcohol-abstinent GTS patients (eight men, one woman) and in nine age- and sex-matched abstinent healthy controls.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe found in a former investigation that by measuring sleep parameters, the REM latency is shortened in the E-W position of sleepers compared with the N-S position. This paper reports on a further neurological observation in humans concerning the influence of the earth's magnetic field: there are statistically significant differences in the EEG of normal subjects, depending on whether the subjects sit facing the N-S or E-W direction. The difference is especially pronounced in the alpha-power.
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