Critical review of literature on the use of short implants

Aim The aims of this review were to verify the validity of short implants as a treatment option in patients with partial or total edentulism, having more or less atrophic jawbones. Methods A systematic review of randomized controlled trials (RCT) was conducted, involving also prospective and retrospective studies published in English language between January 2005 and December 2015. The PubMed and Scopus databases were electronically analyzed. Titles and abstracts were selected, and full texts were evaluated. The data were organized in tables and then presented as a narrative analysis. Results The electronic search provided 891 publications, 50 articles were retrieved in full text and only 11 were included in the review. Although the performance of the implants was evaluated through different success and survival criteria, short implants have shown to have a similar performance to longer implants. Conclusions Short implants could be considered as a treatment option comparable to traditional lenght implant. However, other studies must be conducted to assess uniform criteria to state the quality of treatment

Histomorphometric evaluation of bone regeneration induced by biodegradable scaffolds as carriers for dental pulp stem cells in a rat model of calvarial "critical size" defect

Objective: The aim of this study was to test specific stem cells that could enhance bone formation in combination with specific scaffolds. Methods: Dental Pulp Stem Cells (DPSCs) were seeded with Granular Deproteinized Bovine Bone (GDPB) or Beta-Tricalcium Phosphate (ß-TCP) in a rat model of calvarial "critical size" defect. DPSCs were isolated from permanent human teeth, obtained and characterized using specific stem cells markers (Nanog and Oct-4) by real time-PCR and immunofluorescence. Cells were differentiated for 10-15 days towards the osteoblastic phenotype with 100μM L-ascorbic acid, added every day in culture medium and 20 vol. percentage of FBS in α-MEM medium. Osteogenic commitment was evaluated with real time-PCR by measuring the expression of specific markers (osteonectin and runx2). When a sufficient cell number was obtained, DPSCs were trypsinized, washed in culture medium and seeded onto the GDPB and ß-TCP scaffold sat a density of 0.5-1×106 cells/scaffold. Two bilateral critical-size circular defects (5 mm diameter; 1 mm thickness) were created from the parietal bone of the 8 athymic T-cell deficient nude rats. One cranial defect for each rat was filled with the scaffold alone and the other defect with the scaffold seeded with stem cells. After 12 weeks post-surgery animals were euthanized and histomorphometric analysis was performed. Differences between groups were analyzed by one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) followed by Fisher's Protected Least Significant Difference (PLSD) post-hoc test. A p-value <0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: GDPB group presented higher percentage of lamellar bone than that of GDPB/DPSC, ß-TCP alone had lower levels as compared to ß-TCP/DPSC. The addition of stem cells significantly increased woven bone formation in both scaffold-based implants, although still higher in GDPB based implants. Conclusion: Our findings indicate that GDPB and ß-TCP used as scaffold to induce bone regeneration may benefit from adding DPSC to tissue-engineered constructs

Clinical insights on Tolosa Hunt syndrome: a multidisciplinary approach on neurological-related symptomatology in maxillofacial region

Background Tolosa–Hunt syndrome (THS) related neurological symptoms are described in literature as “unilateral”, “recurrent”, “episodic”, “intense”, “severe”, “lancinating” or “stabbing” pain on the upper face and forehead and may be misdiagnosed due to the similarity of few symptoms and a significant number of common characteristics between both conditions. Aims The aim of this brief report is to indicate some important clinical insights related to Tolosa Hunt syndrome, and to give a frank account on the multidisciplinary approach on neurological-related symptomatology in maxillofacial region. Methods We analysed a selection of patients with such clinical picture. To better describe the proper management of clinical cases, we report a 50-year-old female reporting an history of two years of recurrent, severe stabbing pain around the right eye, prominence of her cheek and forehead. Her general dentist first mistakenly diagnosed toothache and, thus, it was subsequently misdiagnosed the trigeminal neuropathy (TN). Results Reported exemplificative case presented a mild ptosis, diplopia of the right eye, corneal reflex loss, paresthesia and hyperesthesia of upper part of left side of face. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings were suggestive of THS. Complete resolution of symptoms was achieved with oral Prednisolone and constant monitoring of symptoms. Conclusion THS may be added to the long list of differential diagnosis of TN and general dentist and oral surgeons should be informed about such rare causes of facial pain through continued medical education programs

Real-time support for HCCA function in IEEE 802.11e networks: a performance evaluation

The IEEE 802.11 standard for wireless networks has been recently enhanced with the IEEE 802.11e amendment which introduces Quality of Service support. It provides differentiation mechanisms at the Medium Access Control layer, using two additional access functions: the Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) function and the HCF Controlled Channel Access (HCCA) function. Only the HCCA mechanism is suitable for serving traffic streams with real-time requirements such as multimedia applications and Voice Over IP. The IEEE 802.11e standard does not specify a mandatory HCCA scheduling algorithm, but it offers a reference scheduler as the guideline in the resources scheduling design.In this paper we analyze four HCCA alternative schedulers to the reference one. They offer real-time guarantees proposing different solutions to the request of QoS and real-time support expressed by the increasing diffusion of multimedia applications. A performance evaluation is conducted to show the main differences between the considered schedulers, including the reference one.The results show that under several scenarios there is not a unique best scheduler, but there exists a variety of solutions depending on the specified requirements. The conclusions of the paper offer some guidelines in the choice of the scheduler tailored for a particular scenario of interest

Quality of Service in Quantum Networks

In the coming years, quantum networks will allow quantum applications to thrive thanks to the new opportunities offered by end-to-end entanglement of qubits on remote hosts via quantum repeaters. On a geographical scale, this will lead to the dawn of the Quantum Internet. While a full-blown deployment is yet to come, the research community is already working on a variety of individual enabling technologies and solutions. In this paper, with the guidance of extensive simulations, we take a broader view and investigate the problems of Quality of Service (QoS) and provisioning in the context of quantum networks, which are very different from their counterparts in classical data networks due to some of their fundamental properties. Our work leads the way towards a new class of studies that will allow the research community to better understand the challenges of quantum networks and their potential commercial exploitation.Comment: Submitted to the IEEE for possible publicatio

Energy-Efficient Deployment of Stateful FaaS Vertical Applications on Edge Data Networks

5G and beyond support the deployment of vertical applications, which is particularly appealing in combination with network slicing and edge computing to create a logically isolated environment for executing customer services. Even if serverless computing has gained significant interest as a cloud-native technology its adoption at the edge is lagging, especially because of the need to support stateful tasks, which are commonplace in, e.g., cognitive services, but not fully amenable to being deployed on limited and decentralized computing infrastructures. In this work, we study the emerging paradigm of stateful Function as a Service (FaaS) with lightweight task abstractions in WebAssembly. Specifically, we assess the implications of deploying inter-dependent tasks with an internal state on edge computing resources using a stateless vs. stateful approach and then derive a mathematical model to estimate the energy consumption of a workload with given characteristics, considering the power used for both processing and communication. The model is used in extensive simulations to determine the impact of key factors and assess the energy trade-offs of stateless vs. stateful.Comment: Accepted for presentation at IEEE ICCCN 202

In-Network Computing With Function as a Service at the Edge

Offloading computation from user devices to nodes with processing capabilities at the edge of the network is a major trend in today's network/service architectures. At the same time, serverless computing has gained a huge traction among the cloud computing technologies and has, thus, promoted the adoption of Function-as-a-Service (FaaS). The latter has some characteristics that make it generally suitable to edge applications, except for its cumbersome support of stateful applications. This work is set to provide a broad view on the options available for supporting stateful FaaS, which are distilled into four reference execution models that differ on where the state resides. While further investigation is needed to advance our understanding of the opportunities offered by in-network computing through stateful FaaS, initial insights are provided by means of a qualitative analysis of the four alternatives and their quantitative comparison in a simulator

Routing in Quantum Repeater Networks with Mixed Noise Figures

Quantum network holds the key to the next generation of secure communication, long-distance communication, and quantum internet. Due to inherent quantum effects, routing in the quantum network is a major challenge. This study explores a realistic approach to routing in quantum networks which aims to mirror real-world networks by segregating sources and destinations from the network. By addressing practical constraints we examine the impact of heterogeneous nodes on network performance. In particular, we focused on performance in terms of the ratio of high-quality to total nodes and path establishment order. This work unveils relationships between them and communication path fidelity. It highlights the critical role of the fraction of high-quality nodes in end-to-end fidelity and explores the trade-offs between upgrading all nodes to high quality or retaining a subset of lower-quality nodes. Our simulations show that incorporating the knowledge of node quality not only helps in strategically boosting the fidelities of some of the routing paths but also reduces the number of blocked paths in the quantum network.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, IEEE ICC 2024 conferenc

Evaluating a methodical approach to lingual nerve protection during third molar surgery using a standardized step-by-step procedure: A retrospective analysis

The aim of this study was to assess the methodical protection of the lingual nerve via the use of a standardized step-by-step procedure in the surgical extraction of the lower third molar. A 5-year retrospective analysis of surgical third molar surgery conducted by third-year oral surgery specialty program students was performed in the oral surgery department of Policlinico Umberto I in Rome, from 2017 to 2022. All surgeries were carried out using a standardized step-by-step procedure to protect the lingual flap during the surgery. Every patient underwent a review on the initial postoperative day, and subsequently, one week after the surgery, coinciding with the removal of the sutures. During each postoperative visit, thorough examinations were conducted to assess any sensory nerve impairment of the inferior alveolar, lingual, or mylohyoid nerves. None of the cases reported postsurgical lingual nerve injury; there was zero incidence of lingual nerve paresthesia or dysesthesia. The systematic application of lingual flap protection proved to be an effective and reproducible approach for the surgical removal of lower third molars without raising the risk of lingual nerve sensory impairment, regardless of the operator's experience

Energy-Efficient User Association In Extremely Dense Small Cell Networks

Dense heterogeneous networks constitute the paradigm for the future networks. In fact, recent studies demonstrate that the data traffic demand increases exponentially and the traditional cellular networks are not able to provide enough capacity. For this reason operators and standardisation bodies are particularly eager to solve the problem, hence there is a lot of ongoing research on this direction. In this paper we focus on extremely dense networks, that could be found, e.g., in crowded public places or in offices. In such deployments, energy consumption must be kept proportional to the traffic dispatched, otherwise operational costs will render them unsustainable from an economic perspective. In this paper, we propose a network model for the estimation of the power consumption of an LTE dense network of small cells, which takes into account the backhaul network. Furthermore, we introduce a new mechanism for the association of the users to base stations, aiming at minimizing the energy consumption of the LTE access network. The achieved trade-off among capacity and power consumption is then evaluated by means of a classical association policy that connects each user to the base station which received signal is the strongest.TRUEpu