Dentistry and Vaccines

A special issue of Vaccines (ISSN 2076-393X).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2023) | Viewed by 2861

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
1. Department of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Masaryk University, 625 00 Brno, Czech Republic
2. Institute of Health Information and Statistics of the Czech Republic (IHIS-CR), 128 01 Prague, Czech Republic
3. Czech National Center of Evidence-based Healthcare and Knowledge Translation (Cochrane Czech Republic, Czech EBHC: JBI Centre of Excellence, Masaryk University GRADE Centre), Faculty of Medicine, Masaryk University, 625 00 Brno, Czech Republic
Interests: global health; clinical epidemiology; infectious diseases; health psychology; dental public health
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Guest Editor
Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Justus-Liebig-University, 35392 Giessen, Germany
Interests: COVID-19; dental implants; oral and maxillofacial surgery; oral cancer; oral microbiome
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Vaccines are arguably the greatest medical achievement of all time, and have saved millions of lives worldwide. Therefore, all healthcare professionals, including dentists and dental team members, should enhance primary prevention strategies by conveying high-quality knowledge about vaccines and their effectiveness and safety to their patients.

The scope of this Special Issue goes beyond this classic promotional/educational role of dentists in the vaccination context, as recent outbreaks such as COVID-19, Ebola, monkeypox, and hepatitis made it clear that dental practice is not only a high-risk point for cross-infection but also a useful platform for case triage through oral/orofacial manifestations.

The first thematic area of this Special Issue is vaccine hesitancy (VH), as we try to understand this global health threat’s extent (prevalence) among dental practitioners and dental students. VH is a dynamic concept that is unarguably context-specific; therefore, one can anticipate that vaccine uptake promoters and barriers among dental team members may differ significantly from other healthcare professionals’ groups. Dental schools play a key role here, especially in undergraduate curricula, which are supposed to help future dentists understand their roles regarding vaccines and immunization.

The second thematic area is vaccine safety, which can be evaluated in two distinct vigilance systems: a) passive and b) active surveillance. Oral and oromaxillofacial adverse events (AEs) can be reported/found in both vigilance systems, and they require special attention from dental researchers and practitioners for various reasons. Most of these AEs are mild and rare, but they may undermine the public’s confidence in vaccines because they emerge unexpectedly. Moreover, the causal relationships between these AEs and vaccines remain unverified; the attributes of these AEs, e.g., severity, onset, and duration, need to be evaluated innovatively in order to re-assure the public.

The third thematic area is vaccine effectiveness, as dentists and dental team members are threatened by numerous vaccine-preventable diseases during their routine practices. Therefore, vaccination schedules of dental team members need to be a) recommended in light of the best available scientific evidence, b) checked rigorously, and c) updated regularly. The questions in this regard may vary from “how effective are seasonal influenza vaccines in protecting dental team members?” to “do we need to vaccinate dental team members against eradicated diseases like smallpox and low-incidence diseases like tick-borne encephalitis?”

Dr. Abanoub Riad
Dr. Sameh Attia
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Vaccines is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • adult Vaccines
  • COVID-19 Vaccine
  • dental education
  • dental students
  • dentists
  • Diphtheria, Pertussis, and Tetanus (DPT) vaccine
  • hepatitis B vaccine
  • herpes zoster vaccine
  • Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine
  • influenza vaccine
  • Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine
  • oral adverse reactions
  • pediatric vaccines
  • vaccine hesitancy
  • vaccine safety

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

16 pages, 3625 KiB  
Article
COVID-19 among Czech Dentistry Students: Higher Vaccination and Lower Prevalence Compared to General Population Counterparts
by Jan Schmidt, Lenka Vavrickova, Christos Micopulos, Jakub Suchanek, Nela Pilbauerova, Vojtech Perina and Martin Kapitan
Vaccines 2022, 10(11), 1927; https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines10111927 - 14 Nov 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1650
Abstract
The restrictions on medical students’ clinical education during the COVID-19 pandemic has affected their professional readiness and often lengthened their training. These negative impacts are often considered a necessary price as clinical education is hypothesized to be associated with a high risk of [...] Read more.
The restrictions on medical students’ clinical education during the COVID-19 pandemic has affected their professional readiness and often lengthened their training. These negative impacts are often considered a necessary price as clinical education is hypothesized to be associated with a high risk of pandemic spread. This work assesses this hypothesis based on COVID-19 epidemiological data among Czech dentistry students and their comparison to data of the Czech general population of similar age. We addressed two of the five Czech medical faculties (Charles University, Faculty of Medicine in Hradec Kralove and in Pilsen) providing dentistry study program with a survey. A total of 240 students participated, representing a 66.9% response rate. Over 75% of respondents participated in clinical education during the pandemic. The school environment was identified as a place of infection by only 9.8% of respondents who were aware of where they were infected. Overall, 100% of students used FFP2 respirators, and 75.3% used face shields or protective glasses while working with patients. By the end of May 2022, COVID-19 full vaccination and 1st booster rates among students were 93.8% and 54.6%, respectively, which is significantly higher (p < 0.0001, OR 7.3, 95% CI 4.4–12; p < 0.0001, OR 3.7, 95% CI 2.9–4.8, respectively) compared to their peers from the general population (67.1% and 24.4%, respectively). A total of 75.4% of respondents supported mandatory COVID-19 vaccination for healthcare professionals. To the same date, PCR and/or antigen test verified COVID-19 prevalence among students was 37.1%, while among peers from the general population, it was 45.1% (p = 0.015, OR 1.2, 95% CI 1.0–1.5). The combination of extensive protective measures and high vaccination against COVID-19 led to significantly lower COVID-19 prevalence among the students compared to their general population counterparts. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Dentistry and Vaccines)
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