The Luoghi di Prevenzione-Prevention Grounds programme was effective in reducing daily smokers and in reducing smoking in school areas.

No abstract

The current oncology treatment has improved the survival of children with several types of cancer, and the effect of radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy treatment on dental maturation in comparison with chronological age is not widely known. The aim of this work was to evaluate and compare the impact of radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy treatment during dental maturation with chronological age in Chilean children diagnosed with cancer. Study Design was cross-sectional study on children diagnosed with different types of cancer and treated with radiotherapy and/or chemotherapy when they were ages of 0.1 to 13 years. Demirjian tables for both girls and boys are used to determine the dental age. The association between chronological and dental age was highly significant. Nevertheless, a linear relation between chronological and dental age was not observed when the data were stratified by BMI and type of treatment. This study confirmed that dental age is an indicator of chronological age but that other variables, such as body mass index, in children with cancer could be confounder variables. Thus, further studies are necessary to investigate the influence of BMI on tooth eruption/maturation in children under oncological treatment.

This study is one of the few Italian trials to evaluate the effectiveness of a school-based program for preventing smoking initiation.

In forensic science, determining a person's chronological age has become a challenge for researchers. Determining age using dental calcification is becoming increasingly important. The objective of this study is to estimate the dental age of the children's population in Region VIII, Chile. The sample was randomly taken from children under the care of the Faculty of Dentistry at the Universidad de Concepción in Chile. The study encompasses 159 children between 3 and 14 years of age. The dental age was determined following the Demirjian method. The Bland-Altman method was applied to establish the correlation. It was determined that the range between chronological and dental age is similar, and the degree of correlation between both ages is nearly perfect. In conclusion, the degree of correlation between the chronological and dental ages for each gender is also very good although it is slightly higher for females.

No abstract

Child abuse (CA) is considered to be a global public health problem, it manifests in all countries and in all social and religious groups. The role of dentists specialized in children involves a close and frequent relationship providing privileged circumstances for the detection of CA. The purpose of our study is to describe dentist attitudes and awareness concerning CA at nine health care centers in Concepción, Chile. A quantitative, descriptive and transversal exploratory analysis was performed by implementing a survey that collected demographic data, awareness, attitudes, suspicions and accusations of CA. The population size of the study consisted of 53 dentists. Chi square and Wilcoxon (Mann-Whitney U) were used as statistical tests. Largely, awareness was satisfactory. The variables of sex and awareness were significantly higher in women (p =0.0326). However, no differences were found among sex and attitudes. The information received by the dentists during their training, and the number of years of work experience did not correlate with awareness. The undergraduate training of the dentists did not provide any information on CA. This emphasizes the need to incorporate or reinforce the aspect of CA in undergraduate courses taught at the Faculties of Dentistry in Concepción, Chile.

The aim of this study was to investigate the smoking habits of a sample of second year high school students in Romagna (Northern Italy) by means of an anonymous self-administered questionnaire and the efficiency of a previous health education campaign. A sample of 2,691 16-year-old pupils (74% of the school population of this age) was randomly selected. Of these, 863 (32.1%) had participated in a prevention campaign while attending middle school. 19.1% of the students who had taken part in the campaign were smokers compared to 23.2% of those who had not. The students' smoking habits were found to be influenced by the type of school and by the role models (parents, siblings, friends, teachers). The campaign appears to have had good results, especially in places where it was carried out on a wide scale. Suggestions are made for making such campaigns more efficient.