With National Children's Dental Health Month coming up in February, I would like to take the opportunity to highlight some of the useful resources that Trout Library has to offer students in Harcum's dental programs.

As we have done for every program at Harcum, we have created a library guide for Dental Assisting / EFDA / Dental Hygiene. To find the library guides, click on the Library Guides icon in the Quick Links box on the Library’s homepage. Library guides contain tabs for Websites, Databases, Books & eBooks, Videos & Podcasts, Open Educational Resources (OERs), and more.

Under the guide's Databases tab, you will find a list of all the databases we offer that are relevant to the dental field. Some are subscription databases, denoted by a bear icon. To access these databases from off campus, you will need a username and password that can be found in the Library Database Password List under Quicklinks in Harcum Hatch. The primary subscription database that you would use to find peer-reviewed articles in the dental field would be Dentistry & Oral Sciences Source. It uses an EBSCO platform. Below find a screenshot of a sample search from the database for full-text articles published in the last five years on cavities in children.

Results screen in Dentistry & Oral Sciences Source. "Children or pediatric" first search box. "Cavities or caries or decay" in second search box. Refine Results on left. Below: Find any of my search terms, Expanders Limiters. Limit to; Full text, Scholarly (Peer-reviewed journals), References Available, Dates from 2017 to 2022.

CINAHL and Academic Search Complete are other EBSCO databases that would be useful to those in the dental programs. Open access databases that would be beneficial to dental students include BioMed Central, PLOS (Public Library of Science), PubMed, and ScienceOpen. All of these databases are good for finding professional articles and contain a considerable amount of full-text availability.

You will also find some databases listed under the Databases tab that will allow you to search for drug information. One such database is Lexicomp for Dentistry. Lexicomp is another subscription database that will require you to retrieve a username and password from the list under the Quicklinks tab in Harcum Hatch if you are accessing the resource from off campus. 

To do a drug search in Lexicomp, simply enter the name of the drug into the search box, click the blue search button, and then click on the link under Dental Lexi-Drugs in the upper left-hand corner of the resulting screen. You will be brought to a screen that contains a Dental Lexi-Drugs record, the main record in the database. The following are some features of a Dental Lexi-Drugs record:

  • Brand names
  • Generic availability
  • Pharmacologic category
  • Use, including off-label if applicable
  • Allergy considerations
  • Adverse reactions
  • Effects on dental treatment and on bleeding
  • Dosing for various categories of patients
  • Pregnancy and breastfeeding considerations

The following is a screenshot of the top portion of the Dental Lexi-Drugs record for the ophthalmic version of the drug Betaxolol, which is used to treat elevated intraocular pressure. (You would scroll down to view the rest of the record.)

Lexicomp for Dentistry: Blue Bar Below: Home, Alerts/Interactions, Drug I.D.; Patient Education; Calculators; More Clinical Trials; Below: Betaxolol (Ophthalmic) (Dental Lexi-Drugs); Left-hand column below: Pronunciation, FDA Approval Date, Allergy Considerations, Brand Names: US, Brand Names: Canada; Generic Availability (U.S.);, Index Terms, Pharmacologic Category, Use, Local Anesthetic/Vasoconstrictor Precautions, Effects on Dental Treatment, Effects on Bleeding, Adverse Reaction, Dosing: Adult, Dosing: Older Adult, Dosing: Altered Kidney Function: Adult, Dosing: Hepatic Impairment: Adult, Dosing Pediatric, Dosing: Altered Kidney Function: Pediatric; Right-hand column: Bar across top: Monograph, Images, Adult Patient Education, Pediatric Patient Education; Below in bold: Pronunciation, FDA Approval Date, Allergy Considerations, Brand Names: US, Brand Names: Canada, Generic Availability (US); Index Terms, Pharmacologic Category, Use.

Drug information is also available through a number of open access sources, including MedlinePlus, Prescribers' Digital Reference, and RxList. Links to these sources can be found in the Pharmacology box under the Websites tab in the Dental library guide. (Also under this same tab, find a box containing links related to Pediatric Dentistry.) Under the Databases tab, find the DailyMed database from the U.S. National Library of Medicine. When you look up a drug in this database, the information about it that you will find includes description, pharmacology, indications and usage, contradictions, warnings, precautions, adverse reactions, overdosage, dosage and administration, how it is supplied, principal display panel, and ingredients and appearance. Links are also provided to PubMed articles about the drug as well as to clinical trials, a way to get an RSS feed for the drug label, and more. Below is a screenshot of a portion of the DailyMed record for Betaxolol.

Drug Label Information. To the Right: Updated October 8, 2020. Below in Bold: SPL Unclassified Section, Description, Clinical Pharmacology, Indications and Usage, Contradictions, Warnings, Precautions; Left-hand column: Safety: Report Adverse Events, FDA Safety Recalls, Presence in Breast Milk; Related Resources: MedLine Plus, Clinical Trials, PubMed (Bullet point list: All Citations, Adverse Effects, Therapeutic Use, Pharmacology, Clinical Trials), Biochemical Data Summary; More Info For This Drug: View Labeling Archives, RxNorm, Get Label RSS Feed, View NDC Code(s) NEW!

More detailed instruction on the contents and use of many of our databases can be found in our video database tutorials. Choose Database Tutorials in the Learning & Teaching box on the Library’s homepage to access these tutorials.

Remember that if you have questions about these resources or any others, please don’t hesitate to ask us. You may visit the Library during the hours posted on the Library's homepage, email us at library@harcum.edu, use our chat service during the posted hours, or call us at 610-526-6085.

    

Bill Fanshel

Evening/Weekend Librarian

wfanshel@harcum.edu

610-229-9311