Journal of Dental Medicine

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Statement of Problem: According to many researches done in the field of occupational disorders dentists are considered at the risk of musculoskeletal problems. These problems may cause reduction of job length of dentists.
Purpose: This study was done for evaluating the musculoskeletal disorders of dentists, practicing in Yazd.
Materials and Methods: This is a descriptive cross-sectional study, conveyed in Yazd city in 1999 by survey among all of working dentists with eye-to-eye contact questionnaire reply.
Results: Among dentists were interviewed 81.6% of respondents mentioned at least one of musculoskeletal problems. The mentioned disorders were respectively Neck (47.1%) hand (36.2%), wrist (34.8%), upper and lower parts of back (33.3%), shoulder (11.59%), knee (2.8%). About 72.5% of the individuals had no familial history and just 4.5% had these disorders before working as a dentist.
Conclusion: Results of this study revealed that majority of musculoskeletal disorders had significant relationship with age, gender, work place, working hours, level of exercise, direct vision and duration of the job of dental occupation.

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Background and Aim: Proper shaping and cleaning of the root canal system is one of the most important aspects of endodontic treatment. To estimate the canal length before instrumentation in endodontic treatment, traditionally, conventional radiographic techniques and recently Direct Digital Radiography (DDR) are applied. The application of computer technology to radiography has allowed less exposure time, image acquisition, manipulation, storage, retrieval, and transmission to remote sites in a digital format, elimination of wet processing and considerable reduction in the time lapse between image acquisition and display. The purpose of this study was to compare the accuracy of DDR versus conventional radiography in estimating endodontic file lengths of curved canals in first mandibular molars.

Materials and Methods: In this test evaluation study, fourty extracted human first mandibular molars with root curvature were selected.Samples were divided into two groups: With root curvature less than 25 and more than 25. Samples were mounted in plaster blocks and canal lengths were estimated by using DDR and conventional radiographs. Regression analysis and correlation coefficient were used to calculate statistical differences between the groups with P<0.05 as the limit of significance.

Results: Conventional radiography was more precise in canals with less than 25 degrees curvature (P=0.160). While, DDR was more precise for canals with curvature more than 25 degrees (P=0.605). However, these differences were not statistically significant.

Conclusion: The image quality of DDR system has improved to the point that it can now be used for estimating canal lengths, even for curved canals, with accuracy comparable to that of conventional radiography.