%0 Journal Article
%T Comment on ¡°Dental Prosthetic Status and Prosthetic Need of the Institutionalized Elderly Living in Geriatric Homes in Mangalore: A Pilot Study¡±
%A Ashutosh Dixit
%A Varun Arora
%A Kapil Loomba
%A Ridhima Birmani Gaunkar
%A Seema K. Dixit
%A Bhaskar Agarwal
%A Alok Misra
%A Narendra Kumar Gupta
%J ISRN Dentistry
%D 2013
%R 10.1155/2013/535480
%X Public Health Dentistry is a speciality which is targeted towards the larger benefit of community and society. Dental health surveys in specific population groups should be planned adequately and the data should be analyzed in such a way so that it may help in making strategies for the intervention to improve the existing status. This could be only done with the help of proper planning, analysis and interpretation of a sample survey. The present study highlights the research design, statistical and inferential errors in a published work of public health dentistry in order to bring about the common mistakes and errors made. The renewed suggested approach helps in interpreting the results in a better way and makes them objective-oriented. This is in reference to the research article entitled, ¡°Dental Prosthetic Status and Prosthetic Need of the Institutionalized Elderly Living in Geriatric Homes in Mangalore: A Pilot Study¡± published in ISRN Dentistry [1] regarding which we find the following discrepancies in the paper and request publication of an erratum for the benefit of the scientific community. Comment£¿£¿1. In section, under Results, the authors state ¡°Eighty-eight percent of those examined were fully edentulous,¡± however, in Table£¿£¿3 full-prosthesis need has been shown as 46.6% and 41.4% for upper and lower arches, respectively. As there is a substantial difference in authors¡¯ statement ¡°Eighty-eight percent of those examined were fully edentulous¡± and the full-prosthesis need shown in Table£¿£¿3 to be 46.6% and 41.4% for upper and lower arches, respectively. In fact the figure of ¡°Eight-eight percent¡± seems to be the finding of ¡°prosthetic status¡± (Table£¿£¿2; for individuals having no prosthesis) [1]. Comment£¿£¿2. In Results section (paragraph 2, last three lines) authors state ¡°significant differences between the genders and the prosthetic status of their upper arches ( ; ) and lower arches ( ; )¡± which is a misrepresentation of the finding which shows ¡°significant differences between the genders for prosthetic status of their upper arches ( ; ) and lower arches ( ; )¡± [1]. Comment£¿£¿3. In Discussion (paragraph 2), the authors mention that ¡°Another finding was that the prosthetic status was slightly better in males than in females. Females usually depend on male members of their families to take them for treatment¡± [1]¡ªit seems to us that the authors have ignored some vital statistics already shown in their paper while making this inference. This can be illustrated by the findings in the paper itself, as Table£¿£¿1 shows majority of females to be within
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn.dentistry/2013/535480/