PurposeThe purposes of this study were to develop a workstation computer that allowed intraoperative touchless control of diagnostic and surgical images by a surgeon, and to report the preliminary experience with the use of the system in a series of cases in which dental surgery was performed.Materials and MethodsA custom workstation with a new motion sensing input device (Leap Motion) was set up in order to use a natural user interface (NUI) to manipulate the imaging software by hand gestures. The system allowed intraoperative touchless control of the surgical images.ResultsFor the first time in the literature, an NUI system was used for a pilot study during 11 dental surgery procedures including tooth extractions, dental implant placements, and guided bone regeneration. No complications were reported. The system performed very well and was very useful.ConclusionThe proposed system fulfilled the objective of providing touchless access and control of the system of images and a three-dimensional surgical plan, thus allowing the maintenance of sterile conditions. The interaction between surgical staff, under sterile conditions, and computer equipment has been a key issue. The solution with an NUI with touchless control of the images seems to be closer to an ideal. The cost of the sensor system is quite low; this could facilitate its incorporation into the practice of routine dental surgery. This technology has enormous potential in dental surgery and other healthcare specialties.

Smoking produces an adverse effect on clinical periodontal variables and alveolar bone height and density, acting as a potential risk factor for alveolar bone loss, even at an early age with low tobacco consumption. It is very important to inform young smokers about the risk of this habit in relation to periodontal health.

Within the limits of this study it is concluded that (1) periodontal health can be maintained with proper preventive maintenance irrespective of the genotype present, (2) the mean response to mucogingival surgery to cover localized gingival recessions is similar irrespective of the IL-1 periodontal genotype, however, full coverage is achieved more frequently in genotype negative subjects.

Background:The quantification of the dental plaque (DP) by indices has limitations: They depend on the subjective operator's evaluation and are measured in an ordinal scale. The purpose of this study was to develop and evaluate a method to measure DP in a proportional scale.Materials and Methods:A portable photographic positioning device (PPPD) was designed and added to a photographic digital single-lens reflex camera. Seventeen subjects participated in this study, after DP disclosure with the erythrosine, their incisors, and a calibration scale ware photographed by two operators in duplicate, re-positioning the PPPD among each acquisition. A third operator registered the Quigley-Hein modified by Turesky DP index (Q-H/TPI). After tooth brushing, the same operators repeated the photographs and the Q-H/TPI. The image analysis system (IAS) technique allowed the measurement in mm2 of the vestibular total tooth area and the area with DP.Results:The reliability was determined with the intra-class correlation coefficient that was 0.9936 (P < 0.05) for the intra-operator repeatability and 0.9931 (P < 0.05) for inter-operator reproducibility. The validity was assessed using the Spearman's correlation coefficient that indicated a strong positive correlation with the Q-H/TPI rs = 0.84 (P < 0.01). The sensitivity of the IAS was evaluated with two sample sizes, only the IAS was able to detect significant differences (P < 0.05) with the sample of smaller size (n = 8).Conclusions:Image analysis system showed to be a reliable and valid method to measure the quantity of DP in a proportional scale, allowing a more powerful statistical analysis, thus facilitating trials with a smaller sample size.