Tell Me Your Life: Including Life Stories in an Adult Development and Aging Course

The goals of this study were to determine the learning impact of an assignment that consisted of interviewing and analyzing older people’s life stories, and to explore how the assignment was evaluated by students. Participants in the study were 122 first-year social education students enrolled in an adult development and aging course. They evaluated the assignment using an eight-adjective questionnaire and were asked about the benefits of the task. Their answers to the questionnaire were then reviewed using content analysis. The results indicated that marks on the life story assignment predicted marks on an exam about basic course concepts. Students considered that the assignment was interesting, useful, and integrated into the course, although most of them also thought that it was very time-consuming. They identified benefits related to the explicit goals of the course (improvement in the learning of developmental concepts, the acquisition of research-related skills, and the deactivation of aging stereotypes) and personal, growth-related benefits. The authors discuss the difficulties posed by the assignment and its usefulness as a complement to more traditional, lecture-based teaching methods in adult development and aging courses.     

Anesthetic efficacy of Oraqix? versus Hurricaine? and placebo for pain control during non-surgical periodontal treatment

Objectives: To evaluate the efficacy of Oraqix® during scaling and root planing (SRP) in comparison with 20% benzocaine and placebo. Study Design: 15 patients requiring 4 sessions of SRP were enrolled. For each patient, Oraqix®, Hurricaine®, vaseline or no anesthetic product were randomly assigned each to a quadrant. Treatment pain was evaluated on a 100 mm Visual Analog Scale (VAS) and on a Verbal Rating Scale (VRS). The amount of product administered, the need to re-anesthetise, patient and operator satisfaction and the onset of side-effects were also recorded. Results: Oraqix® was significantly better than nothing, with a reduction of VAS score to 13.3 units, but without significant differences with Vaseline or Hurricaine®. Oraqix® was better in VRS reduction than not using any anesthetic (p=0.001) or using vaseline (p=0.024), but similar to Hurricaine® (p=0.232). Conclusions: Oraqix® effectively controls pain in SRP procedures, with few side-effects and a good acceptance on the part of patients and clinicians. Key words:Controlled clinical trial, topical anesthetic, scaling and root planing.     

Geometrical Measurement of Central Tumor Location in cT1N0M0 NSCLC Predicts N1 but Not N2 Upstaging

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