Objectives: To test the hypotheses that the Damon system will maintain intercanine, interpremolar, and intermolar widths. To test subsequent hypotheses that the Damon system will not produce a significant difference in maxillary and mandibular incisor position/angulation when compared with control groups treated with conventional fixed orthodontic appliances for similar malocclusion. Materials and Methods: Subjects treated with the Damon system (N 5 27) were compared with subjects treated with a conventionally ligated edgewise bracket system (N 5 16). Subjects' pretreatment and posttreatment lateral cephalometric radiographs and dental models were scanned, measured, and compared to see whether significant differences exist between time points and between the two groups. Results: Results did not support the claimed lip bumper effect of the Damon system and showed similar patterns of crowding alleviation, including transverse expansion and incisor advancement, in both groups, regardless of the bracket system used. Conclusions: Maxillary and mandibular intercanine, interpremolar, and intermolar widths increased significantly after treatment with the Damon system. The mandibular incisors were significantly advanced and proclined after treatment with the Damon system, contradicting the lip bumper theory of Damon. Posttreatment incisor inclinations did not differ significantly between the Damon group and the control group. Patients treated with the Damon system completed treatment on average 2 months faster than patients treated with a conventionally ligated standard edgewise bracket system. (Angle Orthod. 2011;81:647-652.)

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Obesity has become an epidemic and a public health concern in the United States and many other countries around the world. The impact of obesity on individuals' overall and oral health and its inluence on dental treatment protocols and postoperative procedures have been well documented. It is therefore important for dentists to understand and recognize obesity, educate their patients on its associated risks, promote a healthy lifestyle for their patients, and modify any necessary dental treatments and postoperative procedures for obese patients. To investigate the current practice of obesity assessment in U.S. dental school clinics and the inclusion of obesity topics in predoctoral dental curricula, surveys were sent to all sixty-two U.S. dental schools. Thirtyive surveys were returned but one was blank because the institution is newly established, so the total number used for analysis was thirty-four. The results showed that the topic of obesity has been incorporated into predoctoral dental curricula and is thought to be important for dentists and dental students by most respondents. However, the majority do not routinely measure weight and height, nor calculate Body Mass Index for comprehensive care patients in their predoctoral dental clinics. The authors argue that the topic of obesity should be emphasized in predoctoral dental curricula and that assessments of obesity should be practiced in predoctoral dental clinics.

Factors related to the path of abstracts from presentation at a conference to publication as a full article have been analyzed in the medical ield, but only a few studies have been performed in dentistry. This study investigated the rate of publication of articles based on abstracts presented at the American Dental Education Association (ADEA) Annual Session & Exhibition in 2002 and 2003 and the time lag to publication. This study also aimed to characterize the abstracts and subsequent articles and determine if there were any signiicant factors related to expansion of an abstract into a full manuscript. A total of 370 abstracts met the inclusion criteria and were examined for this study. Subsequent published articles were located using a standard PubMed search. Descriptive statistics and bivariate analyses were used to analyze the data collected (α=0.05). Results suggest that there was a low (19 percent) publication rate for articles based on abstracts presented at the meetings studied. The median time between abstract presentation and article publication was ten months. Factors that showed signiicant correlation to likelihood of article publication were multiple afiliations, presence of analytical statistics, and, to a lesser extent, funding. We suggest that presenters at these meetings should expand their abstracts into full manuscripts and seek to publish them in peer-reviewed journals for the beneit of the profession.

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