Breaking bad medical news in a dental care setting.

Background: Dental care providers may diagnose diseases and conditions that affect a patient's general health. The authors reviewed issues related to breaking bad medical news to dental practice patients and provide guidance to clinicians about how to do so.

Methods: To help reduce the potentially negative effects associated with emotionally laden communication with patients about serious health care findings, the authors present suggestions for appropriately and sensitively delivering bad medical news to both patients and their families in a supportive fashion.

Addressing the marketplace mentality and improving professionalism in dental education: response to Richard Masella's "Renewing professionalism in dental education".

Richard Masella has written a very thought-provoking article that makes many excellent arguments regarding critical issues about professionalism in dental education. Rather than focus on minor points of contention, this response to his article highlights two main areas for further discussion. The first is the impact of the "marketplace" mentality and how there needs to be a balance between fiscal responsibility and ethical and professional responsibility.

Enhancing ethical behavior: views of students, administrators, and faculty.

In an article published in the April 2004 issue of the Journal of Dental Education, Dr. Charles Bertolami proposed that our ethics curricula don't work due to the limitations of didactic education. He suggested that ethics should be taught as a "precurriculum" course prior to entering dental school and that the dental school ethics course should be elective and consist of small groups of students who are guided to introspection to understand their true self-interest.

In vitro testing of xylitol as an anticariogenic agent.

A number of studies involving xylitol chewing gum have demonstrated that xylitol is both noncariogenic and anticariogenic. The ability of xylitol to act as an anticariogenic agent most likely is due to its ability to be transported into caries-causing oral bacteria and inhibiting fermentation either by depleting the cell of high-energy phosphate or by poisoning the glycolytic system. In vitro tests were conducted to determine the concentration of xylitol required to inhibit the growth of three strains of oral streptococcus (S.