COVID-19 pandemic has caused a profound effect on the public mental health around the world. Fear and anxiety of this new disease and uncertainties about the future has led to stress to the society and especially to university students. The objective of this study is to assess depression, anxiety, and stress level experienced by dental students of the Faculty of Dentistry, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM) during the first period of Movement Control Order (MCO) by Malaysia government. A Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21) was distributed online to all USIM’s dental students to assess their psychological impact and mental health status. The questionnaire included demographic characteristics of the respondents. A total of 175 students were involved in this study. Majority of the respondents are female (79.4%), first year dental students (25.7%) and were staying at home with their family (94.9%) in the midst of the outbreak. Overall, the depression, anxiety and stress (DASS-21) scores were normal. However, the proportion of student’s anxiety level was apparently higher than depression and stress. A significant finding showed that students who stayed at home were more anxious than those who stayed at hostel (p=0.035). Pandemic COVID-19 lockdown had impacted the psychological state of the USIM’s dental students mainly on their anxiety level. Mental health among the students should be carefully monitored by the university particularly at the faculty level to prevent further mental breakdown.

It is a universal phenomenon people avoid going to see the dentist because of anxiety and fear. Theory suggests that music has an ability to decrease the level of stress, pain, and anxiety by diverting the patient’s attention from the source of unpleasing stimuli. This study was design to assess the effect of listening to background music and patient’s anxiety level during dental treatment. Sixty patients were randomly divided into a fast beat music group (n=15), slow beat music group (n=15), spiritual music group (n=15) and a control group (n=15). After listening to music for 15 minutes, dental procedures such as anaesthetic injection or drilling sounds were introduced. Patient’s blood pressure and heart rate were recorded before, during and after exposure to music intervention. Result revealed that there were no significant effect of music in reducing the anxiety level among the patients except for postsystolic blood pressure was significantly higher in spiritual music group compared to no music group (p= 0.047). These finding suggest that listening to music and different type of music does not have any effect on patient’s anxiety level in dental setting.

Accumulation of mixed oral microflora appears to be one of the contributing factors to pericoronitis, an inflammation of the oral soft tissues surrounding the crown of a partially erupted, or impacted mandibular third molars.This study was aimed to identify the predominant infectious bacteria related to pericoronitis and their coexistence with other bacterial species at the infection site.Plaque from pericoronal pockets of lower wisdom teeth of 25 patients that have been diagnosed with pericoronitis were sampled and subjected to a standard microbiological procedure for identification of bacterial species including cultivation on enriched agar plates, biochemical profiling and 16s rRNA PCR analysis. A total of 97 microorganisms were isolated and identified from the cultured samples and 94.73% were Gram-positive bacteria; with the highest incidence of Streptococcus gordonii, Streptococcus mitis, and Streptococcus anginosus. This study also revealed that facultative anaerobes were the predominant group causing pericoronitis (89%). The high occurence of multi-strain bacteria ranging from facultative anaerobic to aerobic bacteria display the importance of their infection networks in pericoronitis.Knowledge gained from this study increases our understanding on the role of different pathogens in pericoronitis and provides new insight into the clinical management of patients and in the prevention of its recurrence. Keywords:Pericoronitis, Oral bacteria, Mandibular third molar.

The aim of this study was to obtain data of medical emergencies at the non-hospital based private dental practices in Petaling district of Selangor, Malaysia. Ninety out of 281 identified main practitioners of non-hospital based private dental practices had agreed to participate. A standardised questionnaire forms consisting of four parts including demographic data, emergency equipment and drugs available, occurrence of medical emergencies and training of dental practitioners. All data retrieved were analysed using the Statistical Programme for Social Science (SPSS) version 22.0 (SPSS Inc., 1999). Some of the clinics (28.9%) had reported experiencing medical emergencies events. The most common emergency event noted was syncope (42.2%), followed by hypoglycaemia (27.7%). Majority of the events occurred in the dental surgery room (84.3%), after completion of treatment (31.3%) and were associated with dental extraction procedures (61.4%). Only nine of the clinics (3.3%) were equipped with emergency trolley and none were prepared with a defibrillator or automated external defibrillator (AED). It was also found that 32.3% of all clinics do not have any emergency drugs. All of the practitioners received basic life support training before graduation and 52.2% received supplementary training after graduation. In conclusion, emergency medical events do occur, but majority of dental practices involved in this study were not well equipped to manage these emergencies. It is important to have a standardised national guideline to ensure a safe and well-prepared dental setting during any adverse medical events.