BOSTON, May 9 (UPI) -- More than 90 percent of U.S. domestic-violence victims suffer head, neck and facial injuries, placing dentists in the forefront of recognizing signs of abuse.
In one study, a research team at the University of California San Francisco tested the effectiveness of a tutorial designed to educate dentists in identifying and responding to domestic violence.
A four-stage intervention process called AVDR -- Asking, Validating, Documenting, Referring -- improved dentists' willingness and ability to intervene in suspected cases of domestic violence.
"The first step, asking about abuse, often is the hardest for any health care provider," researchers said. "Dentists in our study reported that after the tutorial, they felt empowered to get through the first step and open the door for their patients."
In the second study, researchers at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine used a "predictive model" for identifying women likely to report injuries related to "intimate-partner violence" -- older subjects were less likely than younger subjects, while non-white subjects were almost four times more likely than their white counterparts to report IPV-related injuries.
The studies are published in The Journal of the American Dental Association.
