The Annals of Ibadan Postgraduate Medicine (AIPM) has been working assiduously right from inception of the 1st edition published in November 2003 till date in achieving the vision of AIPM which is to be a leading national and international medical resource material of high impact factor that is well known and accessed by medical practitioners within and beyond the borders of this country.
Over the years, the journal has gone through different modifications and styling in the cover page design and content formatting. Our online access is now consis- tent and it’s being periodically updated.
As we positioned ourselves in sustaining all the gains achieved so far, Editorial board of this journal will continue to pursue excellence through innovations and steady gain in impact factor.
The December 2010 edition of the journal has articles cutting across different specialties ranging from den- tistry, family medicine, psychiatry and radiology.
The article on determinants of good oral hygiene among pregnant women in Ibadan, South-Western Nigeria, the study assessed the variables that affect oral hygiene status among pregnant women in that locality. The author reported a low turn-out visit of pregnant women to the dentist and also very few of those that visited the dentist had professional dental cleaning. Also noted is the oral hygiene which appeared to worsen as parity increased. Then higher education was also asso- ciated with good oral hygiene. The author concluded that education is a good predictor of good oral hy- giene and corroborating that education improves health seeking behaviours. The use of professional oral health care facilities in pregnancy needs to be improved by means of collaborations between oral health care and ante-natal health caregivers.
Following mass disaster, identification of individual victims by dental means is one of the most reliable methods. Dental identification plays a keyrole in natu- ral and manmade disaster especially in mass casualties associated with aviation disasters and petroleum pipe- line explosions, situations that have also been highly recurrent in Nigeria in the last two decades.
The article on role of forensic dentist following mass disaster reviewed the various forensic dental modali- ties of identification that include matching techniques, post-mortem profiling, genetic finger printing, identi- cal fossil assessment and dental biometrics with digital subtraction. Also considered were the varying extent of use of forensic dental techniques and the resulting positive impact on human identification.
Recommendation were made for improved human identifications in Nigerian situation which include re- form of the National Emergency Management As- sociation (NEMA), incorporations of dental care in primary health care to facilitate proper ante-mortem database of the populace and commencement of iden- tification at site of disaster.
The article on the pattern of medical mortalities in a specialist hospital in North-Central Nigeria shows that HIV infection and its complications remain the lead- ing cause of death despite the advent of HAART.
Other articles in this edition of the journal are the pat- tern of psychiatric inpatient admission in Ibadan; im- plications for service organisation and planning and radiation dose in paediatric computed tomography: risks and benefits.
We have maintained the segments on medical differ- ential diagnosis and diseases review, medical proce- dures, research digest, chronicles of medical history in Africa and Conference news so as to continually up- date our readership community.
On behalf of the board, I wish to sincerely appreciate our excellent reviewers for their input and timely re- view of articles. Thank you and God bless.
Dr. O.F. Sigbeku
Editor-in-Chief