(1) Background: This study aimed to evaluate how laser-activated irrigation (LAI) influences the retention of a fiber post when used before an endodontic filling, as well as after post space preparation. (2) Materials and Methods: Sixty freshly extracted human incisors were selected. The teeth were randomly assigned to three groups—CONVENTIONAL (CONV), PIPS or SWEEPS—and treated endodontically. Each group received irrigation with 1 × 5 mL EDTA (17%) and 3 × 5 mL NaOCl (5.25%). In the first group, the irrigants were not activated, while in the second and third group, LAI was adopted using PIPS and SWEEPS protocols (Lightwalker from Fotona, Ljubliana, Slovenia). After post space preparation, each group received the same irrigation protocol initially established. Sticky posts (everStick Post, GC AUSTRIA GmbH Swiss) were individually adapted to the corresponding post spaces and cemented using dual cure resin cement (Gradia Core, GC Austria GmbH Swiss). All specimens were vertically embedded into self-curing acrylate (Duracryl plus, Spofa Dent, Europe), and each was sectioned into three segments of type A and type B samples for debonding through push-out and pull-out tests. The results were statistically analyzed. (3) Results: The pull-out test showed the superiority of the SWEEPS group, with a mean fracture force of 133.0 ± 50.7 N, followed by the PIPS group, with 102 N, with a lower standard deviation of ± 34.5 N. The CONV group registered the lowest fracture force. Concerning the push-out test, the SWEEPS group showed superior shear stress in comparison to the other two groups (13.45 ± 4.29 MPa); the CONV group was inferior, with shear tension values of 8.31 ± 4.67 MPa. (4) Conclusions: It can be stated that the SWEEPS and PIPS protocols resulted in considerably higher fiber post retention than the conventional method, whereas the SWEEPS protocol was superior to the PIPS protocol.

Background/Objectives: Health system socio-economic inequities in dental care are a long-standing problem in Europe. The issue gained increased relevance during the recent pandemic due to service disruption and socio-economic inequities that become even more pronounced under such circumstances. However, while preventive dental programs are considered key elements of public health, little is known about their role in addressing equity in accessing dental care among different countries and over time between them. This research aims at investigating the relationship between preventive dental policy, socio-economic factors, and the inability to get appropriate dental care within EU member states. Methods: A longitudinal panel dataset at the country level, consisting of data collected during 2020 through 2024, was assembled using open sources of statistics from Europe and other international statistical databases. The dependent variable used in the study was the percentage of the population that had unmet dental care need because of cost. Independent variables were the presence or absence of preventive policies related to dentistry, educational attainment, gross domestic product per capita, unemployment rate, number of dentists, and out-of-pocket expenses. Balanced panel datasets and regressions with robust standard errors in random-effects models were estimated. Interaction terms were created to test the moderating effect of education level on the relationship between policies and access to care. Results: Cross-country variations in terms of the prevention policy environment, socio-economic status, and unmet dental care need were found from descriptive analysis. The higher level of out-of-pocket payment was always related to the higher unmet dental care need, while the lower GDP countries displayed poorer access. Using the balanced panel random-effects model, preventive dental policies and the interaction between preventive policies and educational level were insignificant factors predicting the unmet dental care need. On the other hand, higher out-of-pocket payments, education, and dentists per million population had nearly significant positive relationships. In the sensitivity analysis, GDP per capita showed a negative association, whereas dentists per million population remained positively associated with unmet dental care need. Conclusions: The findings suggest that inequalities in access to dental care during and after the COVID-19 period were shaped primarily by financial and structural determinants rather than by the presence of preventive policies alone. While preventive programs remain an important component of long-term oral health strategies, reducing direct household payment burden and strengthening health system capacity may represent more immediate mechanisms for maintaining equitable access to dental services during periods of system disruption.

Background/Objectives: Oral diseases are among the most prevalent non-communicable diseases and impose a substantial public health burden across Europe. Although general total health expenditure may reflect health-system capacity, it does not specifically measure oral healthcare financing, and evidence regarding its association with population-level oral health remains limited. The objective of this study was to assess the association between total health expenditure and oral health outcomes in European countries. The primary focus was on dental caries prevalence, while a secondary exploratory analysis examined edentulism. Methods: Using publicly available international databases, an ecological, unbalanced country-level panel dataset was constructed. The main caries model included 153 country-year observations from 25 European countries during 2015–2021. An extended model incorporating practicing dentist density included 109 observations from 20 countries. Two-way fixed-effects regression models with country and year effects and country-clustered standard errors were applied. Edentulism was examined using exploratory cross-sectional OLS models for 2019. Results: In the main model, higher total health expenditure (β = −0.00305, p = 0.027) and GDP per capita (β = −0.00024, p = 0.021) were associated with lower caries prevalence. In the extended model, only GDP per capita remained statistically significant (β = −0.00028, p = 0.021), whereas total health expenditure, tertiary educational attainment, and practicing dentist density were not significantly associated with caries prevalence. No statistically significant associations were observed in the exploratory edentulism analyses. Conclusions: Total health expenditure and GDP per capita were negatively associated with caries prevalence in the main country-level model, although the expenditure association was not maintained in the restricted extended sample. These ecological findings do not establish causality and require confirmation using more complete, oral-health-specific data.

Background/Objectives: Environmental air pollution and structural barriers to preventive dental care are increasingly recognized as determinants of population health inequalities. However, their combined association with oral disease burden across European Union (EU) Member States remains insufficiently examined. This study evaluated whether ambient particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure is associated with oral health outcomes and whether preventive system capacity modifies this association. Methods: An ecological panel analysis was conducted using country-level data from the 27 EU Member States for the period 2020–2023. Age-standardized prevalence of untreated dental caries (primary outcome), edentulism (secondary outcome), and periodontal diseases (exploratory outcome) were obtained from the Global Burden of Disease database. PM2.5 exposure was operationalized using national mean annual baseline values. Preventive care access was proxied by the percentage of the population reporting unmet dental care needs (Eurostat EU-SILC). Pooled panel regression models with year fixed effects and country-clustered robust standard errors were estimated. An interaction term between PM2.5 exposure and unmet dental care needs was included to assess effect modification. Results: PM2.5 exposure was not independently associated with caries prevalence after adjustment for preventive access and GDP per capita. However, a statistically significant interaction was observed: higher PM2.5 levels were associated with increased caries prevalence in countries reporting greater unmet dental care needs. PM2.5 exposure was positively associated with edentulism prevalence, independent of preventive access. No significant associations were detected for periodontal diseases. Conclusions: Based on this ecological analysis of European Union Member States, higher PM2.5 exposure in combination with greater unmet dental care needs was associated with higher population-level caries prevalence, whereas PM2.5 exposure alone showed a positive association with edentulism prevalence. These findings are exploratory and should be interpreted with caution, given the use of aggregated country-level data, the potential for ecological fallacy, and the absence of causal inference. Further individual-level and longitudinal studies are needed to clarify these relationships and their underlying mechanisms.

Environmental heat stress disrupts cellular homeostasis through coordinated molecular responses involving protein quality control, oxidative stress regulation, inflammatory signaling, and water homeostasis. Although saliva plays an essential role in maintaining oral homeostasis, the molecular pathways underlying salivary adaptation to heat stress remain insufficiently characterized. We hypothesized that integrating the human salivary proteome with systems biology approaches would identify a reproducible heat-stress-responsive molecular signature. Human salivary proteomic datasets retrieved from the Human Salivary Proteome Wiki were integrated into a non-redundant dataset comprising 15,594 protein accessions corresponding to 2540 distinct proteins. Following deduplication, functional annotation, and biological curation, proteins associated with heat stress response, oxidative stress regulation, inflammatory signaling, water homeostasis, salivary secretion, and mucosal protection were assembled into a Salivary Climate Stress Panel (SCSP). Protein–protein interaction and functional enrichment analyses were performed, and the biological relevance of the identified proteins was independently evaluated using a human heat stress transcriptomic meta-analysis comprising 322 comparisons and the GEO dataset GDS3004. Functional filtering identified 2050 heat-stress-associated salivary proteins, from which a curated SCSP of 35 proteins was established. Network analysis identified HSP90AB1, HSP90AA1, and IL1B as the principal hub proteins linking heat stress, oxidative stress, inflammatory signaling, and water homeostasis pathways, while transcriptomic validation confirmed consistent activation of representative SCSP genes under heat stress conditions. These findings provide a reproducible systems-level framework for investigating heat-stress-responsive molecular pathways in the human salivary proteome and support future studies on salivary biomarkers of environmental heat exposure.

Background: Health financing decisions allocate resources across preventive and curative functions, but the relationship between system-wide expenditure composition and population oral health is unclear. This study assessed country-level associations between general healthcare expenditure and modeled oral disease prevalence in EU Member States. Methods: We assembled a 2016–2023 ecological panel for 27 Member States, matching Eurostat expenditure data with Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2023 prevalence estimates for caries of permanent teeth (all ages) and periodontal diseases (age-standardized). Expenditure was examined at per-capita levels, functional shares, and the Preventive Expenditure Share (PES). Two-way fixed-effects models estimated within-country associations, adjusting for country and year effects and, in extended models, GDP per capita and dentist density. The complete panel comprised 216 country-years; primary HC.1 models included 192 observations from 24 countries. Results: In GDP-adjusted models, a 10% higher preventive expenditure level was associated with a 0.028 percentage-point higher caries prevalence (β = 0.291, 95% CI 0.028–0.554; p = 0.032); this association was not reproduced in the first-difference model and was specification-sensitive. Curative expenditure was positively associated with periodontal prevalence (β = 0.416, 95% CI 0.038–0.794; p = 0.032), equivalent to 0.040 percentage points per 10% expenditure difference, and this association was more consistent across reported sensitivity analyses. PES and functional expenditure shares were not associated with either outcome; the log P/C ratio was positively associated with caries, whereas its untransformed form was not. Conclusions: These ecological estimates describe associations between broad system-wide expenditure categories and modeled oral-health outcomes. They do not identify oral-health-specific spending or establish causal effects, and they cannot show that preventive dentistry is ineffective. Disease-specific expenditure, service delivery, and coverage data are needed to assess oral-health policy performance.