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Background. Pericoronitis is a painful inflammatory condition commonly associated with third molar teeth. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between oral hygiene and periodontal health status and the presence of pericoronitis in semi-impacted third molar teeth. Methods. A cross-sectional study was conducted, and 54 patients having at least one mandibular vertically semi-impacted third molar tooth with or without pericoronitis were consecutively enrolled. Subjects with pericoronitis and subjects with healthy third molars were selected according to symptoms in the gingiva overlying semi-impacted third molar teeth. Periodontal health status and oral hygiene were evaluated with the measures of plaque index (PI), gingival index (GI), and total number of sites with a probing depth PD ≥ 4   mm . The clinical data collected in this study was analyzed with Mann–Whitney U test using SPSS 20.0 package program. Results. The PI scores were found to be significantly higher in patients with pericoronitis ( p < 0.05 ). Although the GI scores and PD scores were higher in patients with pericoronitis, the difference did not reach statistical significance when compared with those in healthy subjects ( p > 0.05 ). Conclusion. The findings obtained in this study suggest that the amount of dental plaque was positively associated with third molar pericoronitis. Gingival and periodontal health conditions were similar between patients with and without pericoronitis. Improving oral hygiene and controlling dental plaque may help prevent third molar pericoronitis.

Covid-19 pandemic, continues all over the world with the increasing number of confirmed cases and performed tests day by day. It has been shown that collecting nasopharyngeal samples, as the most commonly prefered method to perform RT-PCR, has disadvantages like causing discomfort and bleeding in patients. Sample collecting procedure also renders healthcare professionals by exposing them to the risk of transmission of the virus related to the direct contact with patients. These disadvantages make this procedure undesirable for the researchers and forces them to search for an alternative technique. At this point, saliva appears as an opportunity, regarding its high viral load. On the other hand, this high viral load poses a threat, especially for professions such as dental practitioners, with too much aerosol exposure. Since dentistry is a branch of health that constantly needs direct operations, it is necessary to be protected from the virus as much as possible while caring for the patient. A literature review was done using electronic databases “PubMed,” “Google Scholar,” and “Cochrane Database,” on January 2021. Studies have proposed many different preventive measures in this regard. Therefore, the purpose of this review is to draw attention to the saliva by bringing together the recent research and also to provide information and a perspective to dental clinicians about both prevention and a potential diagnostic technique. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.37.4.4263 How to cite this:Sadikoglu IS, Caymaz MG. Saliva: Both a Threat and an Opportunity in Covid-19 Pandemic. Pak J Med Sci. 2021;37(4):---------.  doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.37.4.4263 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Aims: This study aimed to evaluate the perception, attitude, and awareness of dental practitioners (DPs) and intern DPs towards SARS-COV-2 by comparing the awareness-attitude score (AAS). Materials and Methods: An online survey was generated in Google Forms. An invitation email was sent to all DPs in Northern Cyprus (n = 270) and intern DPs at Near East University (n = 200). Data were blindly collected from March 2020 to May 2020. Participants received 1 point for each correct answer. By adding up all collected points, an AAS was determined. Data were statistically analyzed. Results: The questionnaire was answered by 228 DPs (84% response-rate). No statistically significant difference was detected between gender-groups in terms of AAS (P = 0.301). A significant difference was detected between occupation groups in terms of AAS (P = 0.006), and of these, dentist-academician-group exhibited superior score. Other tested variables (specialty, way of occupation, place of occupation, and duration of occupation) had no influence on the AAS (P > 0.05). Relation between age and AAS was statistically significant (P = 0.054, Spearmen Correlation). Increasing age increases AAS as linear relation was detected between these variables (P = 0.011, Linear Regression). The questionnaire was also answered by 182 intern DPs (91% response-rate). No significant difference was detected between gender-groups (P = 0.378). Correlation was insignificant between age and AAS (P = 0.933). Conclusions: Occupation is the only variable influencing AAS of DPs. Academicians exhibited superior knowledge regarding SARS-CoV-2. The AASs of DPs and intern DPs were analogous.