Dental Tribune Pakistan Edition

DENTAL TRIBUNE 11Pakistan EditionMay 2014 UHS Asia, Africa, America and Europe.The Pakistani delegation from comprised of MPhil students of Oral Pathology Department and was led by Assistant Professor Dr. Nadia Naseem. In the poster competition, Dr. Sunnaeyah Waris bagged the Third prize for her poster titled: Histopathological Changes in Gingival Tissues of Patients having Pulmonary Tuberculosis in Pakistan". Dr. Samia Qadir received an overwhelming response on her presentation on; "The Oral Mucosal Changes in Patients of HIV/AIDS taking Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) in Pakistan". Dr. Qadir’s study highlighted the preventive aspects required to improve oral health which could enhance the quality of life and compliance to drug therapy for HIV patients. Dr. Rabia Anjum displayed her poster on: "The Clinico-pathological characteristics and Expression of CD10 in Soft Tissue Lesions Associated with Impacted Third Molar."Dr. Abdul Khaliq displayed his poster titled; " Morphological Changes in Oral Mucosa of Rabbit, Induced by Light Emitting Diode (LED) used as Dental Curing Light". Dr. Mohayman Sarfaraz presented a paper on; "Oral Cytopatological Changes in Habitual Wet Snuff Dippers in Pakistan". The Head of UHS Pathology Department - Dr. AH Nagi said, “The recognition we have recieved is particularly exciting for students, because they were competing with students not only from the local institutions, but also from among the leading research universities of the world.” Durry. "We know that Pakistan was doing a lot to prevent the export of polio". Durry added. According to news reports; Dr. Durry also stated that; “Pakistan should continue to take steps to ensure that the international community is not affected by the poliovirus.” WHO Pakistan Country Director - Dr. Nima Saeed Abid was also hopeful. “We are taking concrete measures with regard to Polio vaccination. The WHO is committed to facilitating the government of Pakistan and will continue supporting all the steps taken to implement WHO recommendations to protect the world from polio,” Earlier, Pakistan had pointed out the difficulties faced with regard to the unstable security situation in certain areas, the threat of terrorism and attacks on polio workers among other factors. To compound the problem, a vaccination campaign had been used as a cover to launch a military operation on Pakistani soil. It was also reported that; Numerous counters issuing polio vaccination certificates have become operational at a number of institutions, airports and important locations to facilitate the international travelers.Health officials should ensure that all the confusions regarding the authorized certification are removed quickly. The certificates should be issued international travelers free of cost and the vaccination counters should be operative throughout the week. Take drops or Travel stops Continued from page 2 society, with a more humane approach. But we can only do this successfully, if we provide the rural dental clinician with decent amenities of life. There is also a need to focus on disease- prevention, rather than disease-treatment” Dr. Inayat added. Pakistan needs a paradigm shift towards research oriented and clinical based scientific methodologies with emphasized training on medical jurisprudence and human consumer rights as well. In Pakistan, there is no dearth of experienced professionals and academicians, who have the global exposure to upgrade our curriculum and enable faster access to global developments. Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC) has the authority and responsibility to lead and guide all the medical and dental education institutions, with a regulated curriculum, to ensure uniformity of syllabus and train all the Graduates in important subjects, surgical skill and relevant sciences. There have been numerous debates, where dental and oro-facial educators were collectively deliberating to enhance the knowledge and skills of our students and graduates. The new scientific revolutionary era of molecular biology, genetic tissue engineering, bio-informatics and nano- technology appear to reshape the current trends and practices in dental care education, services and curriculum designing. Internationally, there is a transformation towards new research-based, objectively structured and clinically oriented curriculum, which should not only be able to produce health care professionals with a broad knowledge and expertise of existing dental scientific concepts, but also with a global vision to develop new strategies in prevention and management of human diseases with a major emphasis on evidence based clinical practices. However, the health education systems in Pakistan and many other developing countries, have not evolved sufficiently to match this revolutionary era of scientific development. Presently followed and practiced clinical dentistry concepts and techniques are perhaps rather old and mainly focus on the symptomatic relief of oral health related issues and rehabilitation or repair of damaged or lost natural body parts. The very important components like oral healthcare education and prevention of these disease conditions are greatly neglected in the presently working system of dental health education. The supportive utilization of our robust print and electronic media has not been optimized for this purpose. The assimilation and incorporation of recent advancements & technologies is also quite slow. The establishment of a National Dental Council (exclusive of PMDC), has also been recommended to carry out evaluation, recognition and structuring of dental profession on an independent basis. Several gurus of dental education in Pakistan also recommend that the BDS programmes in Pakistan should be extended to a 5 years duration, to make it more comprehensive and gain global acceptance. All the stakeholders must work together with the universities and PMDC to reach the right conclusions, solid decisions and a comprehensive road-map for resolving this crucial issue of upgrading the curriculum. We need a stronger academic visionary leadership and collaboration. Dental curriculum - time for change? Continued from front page Pakistani Dental students .... Continued from front page Continued from front page Health Budget 2014-15 National Health Services, Regulations & Coordination Division shows a minor increase from Rs. 26,802 million during the previous year to Rs. 27,015 millon in the new budget for 2014-2015. However, the government has shown some generosity for health sector, by waiving off the import duties applicable on Modern Medical Equipment and healthcare technology. Another generous allocation of Rs. 63 billion has been made for promotion of higher education, which will be helpful to many of the medical professionals who desire to improve their qualifications for serving their nation better. Under the head of Health Affairs and Services, a total allocation of Rs 10,017 million has been made, which is higher by 1.6% and 6.2% respectively when compared with budget and revised estimates 2013-14. The allocation for Hospital Services forms the major component under this classification. Considering the high costs of medical facilities and the large segments of poor Pakistanis, the government should have made a sizeable increase in the Health budget to ensure relief for the deprived segments of our society. surgical bone harvesting. Until recently, no studies had compared the different methods available for using bone marrow stem cells for bone reconstruction. In the fol lowing paragraphs, I shall summaries a study conducted by our research team, which entailed the creation of critical bony defects in rabbits and subsequently applying each of the four main stem cell methods used globally in order to compare their effectiveness in terms of bone healing:1 fresh bone marrow (without any kind of processing); a bone marrow stem cell concentrate; a bone marrow stem cell culture; and a fat stem cell culture (Figs. 6 & 7). In a fifth group of animals, no cell therapy method (control group) was used. The best bone regeneration results were found in the groups in which a bone marrow stem cell concentrate and a bone marrow stem cell culture were used, and the control group showed the worst results. Consequently, it was suggested that stem cells from bone marrow would be more suitable than those from fat tissue for bone reconstruction and that a simple stem cell concentrate method (which takes a few hours) would achieve similar results to those obtained using complex cell culture procedures (which take on average three to four weeks; Figs. 8a & b). Similar studies performed in humans have corroborated the finding that bone marrow stem cells improve the repair of bony defects caused by trauma, dental extractions or tumours. The histological images below illustrate the potential of bone-sparing materials combined with stem cells for bone reconstruction (Fig. 9). It is clear that the level of mineralized tissue is significantly higher in those areas where stem cells were applied (Figs. 10a & b). Evidently, although bone marrow stem cell techniques for bone reconstruction are very close to routine clinical use, much caution must be exercised before indicating such a procedure. This procedure requires an appropriately trained surgical and laboratory team, as well as the availability of the necessary resources (Figs. 11a–h, taken during laboratory manipulation of marrow stem cells at São Leopoldo Mandic dental school in Brazil). 1 André Antonio Pelegrine, Antonio Carlos Aloise, Allan Zimmermann et al., Repair of critical-size bone defects using bone marrow stromal cells: A histomorphometric study in rabbit calvaria. Part I: Use of fresh bone marrow or bone marrow mononuclear fraction, Clinical Oral Implants Research, 00 (2013): 1–6. 2 André Antonio Pelegrine, Antonio Carlos Aloise & Carlos Eduardo Sorgi da Costa, Células Tronco em Implantodontia (São Paulo: Napoleão, 2013) Dr. André Antonio Pelegrine is a specialist dental surgeon in periodontology and implant dentistry (CFO) with an MSc in Implant Dentistry (UNISA), and a PhD in clinical medicine (University of Campinas). He completed postdoctoral research in transplant surgery (Federal University of São Paulo). He is an associate lecturer in implant dentistry at São Leopoldo Mandic dental school and coordinator of the perio-prosthodontic-implant dentistry team at the University of Campinas in Brazil. He can be contacted at pelegrineandre@gmail.com. Stem Cells in Implant Dentistry Continued from page 6 rootscontact

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