C Svanberg | PubMed Health

PubMed2004

Dental caries experience in children with congenital heart disease: a case-control study.

OBJECTIVES: To compare the dental health of a group of children with complex congenital heart disease with that of age and gender matched healthy controls. DESIGN: Case-control study. SETTING: Faculty of Medicine and Odontology/Pediatric cardiology and Pedodontics, Umeå University, Sweden. SAMPLE AND METHODS: All the cases and their controls lived in the county of Västerbotten in northern Sweden. Each group comprised 41 children with a mean age of 6.5 years. Data were collected from medical and dental records while all bitewing radiographs were read separately by one of the authors. RESULTS: Children with congenital heart disease had significantly more caries in their primary teeth than the control group. The mean dmfs-value was 5.2 +/- 7.0 in the cardiac group compared to 2.2 +/- 3.5 in the control group (P < 0.05). Twenty-six of the children had all four 6-year-molars, and their mean DMFS-values were 0.9 +/- 1.9 in the cardiac group compared to 0.3 +/- 0.6 in the control group (P > 0.05). The children with congenital heart disease had received more caries prevention based on the use of fluorides than the control group. There was a significant correlation between the number of fluoride varnish treatments and the dmfs value of the child (r = 0.411, P < 0.01). Fifty-two per cent of the children in the cardiac group had been prescribed fluoride tablets on one or more occasions compared to 17% in the control group (P < 0.01). Number of months on digoxin medication and the dmfs-value had a significant correlation (r = 0.368, P < 0.05). Ten of the children had been on digoxin medication between 6 and 87 months; this subgroup had a mean dmfs-value of 10.1 +/- 8.5. CONCLUSION: Swedish children with complex congenital heart disease have poorer dental health than healthy age and gender matched controls in spite of intensive preventive efforts. In many cases, intervention had been given when caries were present. A closer cooperation between paediatric cardiology and paediatric dentistry is needed.

Cardiotonic Agents↗

PubMed2003

Power laws in polymer solution dynamics.

The dynamical screening length xi(h) in semidilute to highly concentrated polymer solutions of poly(methyl methacrylate) in propylene carbonate has been examined using photon correlation spectroscopy and pulsed field gradient nuclear magnetic resonance. A crossover between different concentration dependent regimes, xi(h) approximately phi(-alpha), where alpha is found to be approximately 0.5, approximately 1, and approximately 2, is observed when the local viscosity is taken into account. Here phi is the volume fraction of polymer in the solution. Well-defined crossovers between alpha=0.5 and alpha=1 corresponding to a transition from a marginal solvent to a theta solvent behavior have been predicted to occur due to the reduction of excluded-volume effects between the spatially correlated polymer segments with increasing polymer volume fraction. However, a clear experimental validation of the crossover has never been presented before. The third regime (alpha approximately 2) is observed in the highly concentrated region where the static screening length is comparable to the persistence length of the polymer. The observation indicates that the rigid rod model previously used to describe concentrated solutions is an oversimplification valid only in the very high concentration limit. The obtained results at high concentrations are discussed in the frame of a simple physical model where segments at the persistence length scale are treated as flexible rodlike segments.

Journal Article↗