Children in dentistry are traditionally described in terms of medical diagnosis and prevalence of oral disease. This approach gives little information regarding a child’s capacity to maintain oral health or regarding the social determinants of oral health. The biopsychosocial approach, embodied in the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health - Child and Youth version (ICF-CY) (WHO), provides a wider picture of a child’s real-life experience, but practical tools for the application of this model are lacking. This article describes the preliminary empirical study necessary for development of such a tool - an ICF-CY Core Set for Oral Health. An ICF-CY questionnaire was used to identify the medical, functional, social and environmental context of 218 children and adolescents referred to special care or paediatric dental services in France, Sweden, Argentina and Ireland (mean age 8 years ±3.6yrs). International Classification of Disease (ICD-10) diagnoses included disorders of the nervous system (26.1%), Down syndrome (22.0%), mental retardation (17.0%), autistic disorders (16.1%), and dental anxiety alone (11.0%). The most frequently impaired items in the ICF Body functions domain were ‘Intellectual functions’, ‘High-level cognitive functions’, and ‘Attention functions’. In the Activities and Participation domain, participation restriction was frequently reported for 25 items including ‘Handling stress’, ‘Caring for body parts’, ‘Looking after one’s health’ and ‘Speaking’. In the Environment domain, facilitating items included ‘Support of friends’, ‘Attitude of friends’ and ‘Support of immediate family’. One item was reported as an environmental barrier – ‘Societal attitudes’. The ICF-CY can be used to highlight common profiles of functioning, activities, participation and environment shared by children in relation to oral health, despite widely differing medical, social and geographical contexts. The results of this empirical study might be used to develop an ICF-CY Core Set for Oral Health - a holistic but practical tool for clinical and epidemiological use.

Background: Comparative optimism, the belief that negative events are more likely to happen to others rather than to oneself, is well established in health risk research. It is unknown, however, whether comparative optimism also permeates people’s health expectations and potentially behaviour during the COVID‐19 pandemic.Objectives: Data were collected through an international survey (N = 6485) exploring people’s thoughts and psychosocial behaviours relating to COVID‐19. This paper reports UK data on comparative optimism. In particular, we examine the belief that negative events surrounding risk and recovery from COVID‐19 are perceived as more likely to happen to others rather than to oneself.Methods: Using online snowball sampling through social media, anonymous UK survey data were collected from N = 645 adults during weeks 5‐8 of the UK COVID‐19 lockdown. The sample was normally distributed in terms of age and reflected the UK ethnic and disability profile.Findings: Respondents demonstrated comparative optimism where they believed that as compared to others of the same age and gender, they were unlikely to experience a range of controllable (eg accidentally infect/ be infected) and uncontrollable (eg need hospitalization/ intensive care treatment if infected) COVID‐19‐related risks in the short term (P < .001). They were comparatively pessimistic (ie thinking they were more at risk than others for developing COVID‐19‐related infection or symptoms) when thinking about the next year.Discussion: This is one of the first ever studies to report compelling comparative biases in UK adults’ thinking about COVID‐19.

This study aimed to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on the experiences of special care dentistry providers worldwide. An online survey was administered from 10 to 31 July 2020. Age, sex, years of professional activity, COVID-19 status, geographical area of origin and length of lockdown period were recorded for all participating dentists. The relationships between these variables and the changes in clinical activity, the treated patients’ COVID-19 status and the implementation of protective measures in the dental clinic were analyzed. A total of 436 (70.6% women) dentists from 59 countries responded to the survey. Clinical activity was reduced or stopped for 79.1% of respondents. The most common change was to limit treatment to urgent care only (53.7%). Treatment under general anesthesia or deep sedation was discontinued (51.0%) or reduced (35.8%) for the majority of respondents. Male dentists were more likely to maintain their clinical activity than female dentists (p < 0.001), and respondents from North America were more likely to do so than participants from other geographical regions (p < 0.001). Dentists from Latin America and the Caribbean were more likely to report treatment of confirmed cases of COVID-19 than those from Europe (p < 0.001). The implementation of protective measures in the dental office was determined by the survey participant’s sex, intensity of clinical activity and geographical area of origin. To conclude, the provision of special care dentistry was considerably reduced in response to the pandemic. Service maintenance was mainly related to the geographical area in which the surveyed dentists worked, further exacerbating pre-existing inequalities.

Providing restorative treatment for persons with disability may be challenging and has been related to the patient’s ability to cope with the anxiety engendered by treatment and to cooperate fully with the demands of the clinical situation. The aim of the present study was to assess the survival rate of ART restorations compared to conventional restorations in people with disability referred for special care dentistry.