New study highlights need for increased physician training to care for patients following self-managed medication abortion

Boston University School of Medicine

FacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

(Boston)—As more states restrict clinician-managed abortion in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v Wade in

2022, more patients are pursuing self-managed medication abortion (SMMA). Definitions of SMMA can vary, but SMMA typically refers to the use of mifepristone and/or misoprostol to induce abortion outside of a clinical context. Despite the 97% completion rate and excellent safety record of a medication abortion, patients who pursue SMMA sometimes experience symptoms that prompt them to visit an emergency department or primary care clinic for evaluation.

 

While most emergency and primary care physicians are willing to provide post-SMMA care, a new study finds that knowledge gaps exist, and more training is needed. Furthermore, physicians at Catholic health systems may feel curtailed in their ability to provide post-SMMA care to their patients.  

 

“In the evolving landscape of abortion care, educational efforts should prepare physicians in all specialties to care for patients post-SMMA,” says corresponding author Xanthia Tucker, MD, assistant professor of internal medicine and pediatrics at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine.

 

In an effort to investigate the practices, confidence, knowledge and attitudes related to post-SMMA care among emergency medicine (EM), family medicine (FM), and internal medicine (IM) physicians, researchers invited 505 EM, FM, and IM physicians at an academic medical center and Catholic non-profit health system in Michigan to complete a confidential online survey. Michigan is a state with legal access to abortion and more than 20% Catholic hospital beds.

 

The survey contained four sections assessing exposure to and confidence in caring for patients after spontaneous miscarriage, clinician-managed medication abortion, and SMMA; knowledge of eight signs and symptoms following medication abortion; attitudes toward post-SMMA care; and participant demographics.

 

Among their findings:

 

• While most (89%) physicians had not knowingly cared for patients after SMMA, 96% of these physicians would, if given the opportunity to do so.

 

• Confidence managing spontaneous miscarriage, clinician-managed medication abortion, and SMMA did not vary between the academic and Catholic locations, but more participants at the Catholic system reported feeling limited by their employer’s policies in caring for patients after SMMA.

 

 

 

 

• Participants reported less confidence caring for patients following SMMA compared to spontaneous miscarriage or clinician-managed medication abortion, and confidence differed by specialty. EM physicians reported higher confidence in providing post-SMMA care than primary care physicians, and FM physicians were more confident than IM physicians. Knowledge of expected signs and symptoms following medication abortion did not differ by specialty.

 

• Confidence managing all three conditions was significantly associated with having received abortion training during residency.

 

 

While the increasing politicization and criminalization of abortion make post-SMMA care challenging to study, Tucker believes further projects should explore where and how patients are receiving post-SMMA care since the Dobbs ruling. She hopes that addressing knowledge gaps in abortion care among emergency and primary physicians, who are often the first point of contact for patients after SMMA, will improve patients’ access to care. .Adds Tucker: “Training emergency and primary care physicians in abortion and post-abortion care may help address not only abortion-related patient concerns but also a variety of pregnancy-related issues. Competence in abortion care means better care for all patients capable of pregnancy.”

 

These findings appear online in the Journal of Women’s Health.

---

Journal

Journal of Women s Health

DOI

10.1177/15409996251387014 

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Ready for Self-Managed Medication Abortion? Practices, Confidence, Knowledge, and Attitudes of Emergency and Primary Care Physicians

Article Publication Date

14-Oct-2025

 

Crown jewel of dental restoration technology may be in sight

University of Texas at Dallas

FacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

University of Texas at Dallas researchers have developed a method to process enable same-day 3D printing of dental restorations made of zirconia. 

view more 

Credit: The University of Texas at Dallas

University of Texas at Dallas researchers have developed a technology that enables same-day, 3D-printed dental restorations made of zirconia, the gold-standard material for permanent dental work.

The team is working to make the technology, which could be used for crowns, bridges, veneers and other restorations, commercially available with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

“We are excited to be advancing the commercialization of chair-side 3D-printed, all-ceramic zirconia permanent dental restorations,” said Dr. Majid Minary, professor of mechanical engineering in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science. “Because the crowns can be custom-printed for each patient on the same day, this approach offers greater personalization, faster treatment and the convenience of receiving a permanent restoration in a single visit.”

Dental crowns are caps that are placed over damaged or decaying teeth. They also can serve as supports in a dental bridge, which replaces a missing tooth. 3D-printed restorations have emerged as an option that offers better customization and color-matching, as well as a more efficient manufacturing process that could reduce cost and waste. Currently available same-day, 3D-printed crowns, however, are made of ceramic resins that are not as strong as zirconia.

And while same-day zirconia crowns are also available, they are not 3D-printed; rather, they are milled, a process that involves carving the crown from a block of zirconia. These zirconia restorations face challenges and limitations in design complexity and risks for micro-cracking during milling or sintering.

The UT Dallas researchers and their collaborators have solved a challenge in producing 3D-printed zirconia restorations by significantly reducing the time involved in processing a zirconia restoration after it is 3D-printed. The researchers explain their approach in the September print edition of the journal Ceramics International. The method will require clinical validation and regulatory approval before it becomes commercially available.

After a zirconia crown is 3D-printed, it must undergo two key steps: debinding and sintering. In the debinding stage, heat is applied gradually to burn off the resin that held the zirconia particles in place during printing. This process can take from 20 to 100 hours. Once the resin is removed, the crown undergoes sintering — a high-temperature firing process similar to baking clay in a kiln — which fuses the zirconia particles together into a dense, hardened solid.

“Debinding has been the bottleneck in the process,” said Minary, corresponding author of the article. “It must be done very slowly. If you speed it up, the polymer being burned off turns into gas, and if that gas cannot escape, the crown may crack or fracture. A debinding time of 20 to 100 hours is not practical for same-day dental service. As a result, 3D-printed permanent zirconia restorations are not yet commercially available.”

The team’s technology reduces debinding time to less than 30 minutes — a breakthrough that could make same-day permanent dental restorations possible. Their approach combines enhanced heat transfer with the use of porous graphite felt, which can reach temperatures above 2,550 degrees Fahrenheit. The felt covers the 3D-printed restoration, allowing gas released from the resin to escape, while a vacuum system simultaneously removes the gas.

“The combination of all of these features is what makes it work,” Minary said. “With our technology, if a practitioner wants to offer a 3D-printed zirconia crown chair-side, they could provide it to a patient within just a few hours.”

The UT Dallas team led by Minary, in collaboration with Pan-AM Dental Laboratory, recently received a $550,000 award (grant 2431684) through the NSF’s Partnerships for Innovation – Technology Translation project to support commercialization of the technology.

The commercialization project also involves 3DCeram Sinto Inc. in Grand Ledge, Michigan; and Dr. Amirali Zandinejad, a prosthodontist in Arlington, Texas, and former associate professor at the Texas A&M University College of Dentistry.

Other UT Dallas-affiliated contributors include Mahdi Mosadegh, first author and mechanical engineering doctoral student; Moein Khakzad PhD’25; chemistry doctoral student Zahra Sepasi; mechanical engineering graduate student Kalyan Nandigama; and Dr. Golden Kumar, associate professor of mechanical engineering.

In addition to the NSF, the research in the paper also was supported by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

---

Journal

Ceramics International

DOI

10.1016/j.ceramint.2025.05.206 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Single-step thermal debinding for ceramics vat photopolymerization in less than 30 minutes

COI Statement

As the corresponding author, I confirm that all authors have read the manuscript and agree with the journal's data deposition requirements. A provisional US patent has been submitted. The authors declare no other competing interests.

 

Palm oil isn’t necessarily less sustainable than other oils, say conservationists

“Crops don’t destroy forests and other biodiverse habitats; people do,”

Cell Press

FacebookXLinkedInWeChatBlueskyMessageWhatsAppEmail

 

image: 

A palm forest with a dirt road.

view more 

Credit: Erik Meijaard

Palm oil isn’t inherently bad, and olive oil isn’t inherently good, conservation scientists say in an opinion paper publishing October 16 in the Cell Press journal Cell Reports Sustainability. They argue that the vegetable oil industry is haunted by narratives and myths about different types of oil crops, but the reality is much more nuanced. Almost all oils—including soybean, olive, coconut, and sesame oil—are associated with biodiversity and human rights issues in some contexts, depending on crop management and supply chains. The researchers call for greater transparency and regulation to enable consumers to make informed decisions about their oil choices. 

“Crops don’t destroy forests and other biodiverse habitats; people do,” says author and conservation scientist Erik Meijaard of Borneo Futures and the University of Kent. “We want to bring more nuance to the discussion around vegetable oils, to make consumers aware that there’s nothing simple about it. I challenge everyone to look a little deeper, if you care about social and environmental issues.” 

Palm oil has been vilified in the Global North due to concerns about tropical rainforest deforestation and the destruction of orangutan habitats. The researchers say that this concern is justified but that other oil crops can cause just as much ecological damage. For example, soybean production has driven massive deforestation in South America and is associated with large-scale pesticide use and related human health issues in South America, olive harvesting kills millions of roosting birds every year, and sesame production has been linked to human rights abuses in South Sudan and Ethiopia.  

Palm oil production also isn’t always bad, the researchers say. Subsistence farmers (i.e., farmers who grow crops for their own needs) in Central and Western Africa account for around 18% of the land used globally for oil palm cultivation, but this traditional cultivation is usually overlooked in global statistics. Additionally, the increased scrutiny that palm oil has received over the past two decades has driven tighter regulations and certification within the industry.  

“There’s been so much pressure on the palm oil industry to improve sustainability practices, it’s pushed part of, but certainly not the entire industry, into a much better direction,” says Meijaard. 

The researchers acknowledge that making informed shopping choices is currently very difficult due to a lack of transparency and traceability within the vegetable oil industry. 

“Opaque supply chains within the industry mean that even if you do want to know what the impact of your consumption really is, you can’t,” says Meijaard. “You should be able to walk up to a product with your mobile phone and point at a QR code, and it should be able to tell you whether that product’s production aligns with your values. The technologies already exist; it’s just a matter of how to scale it in a cost-effective way.” 

Improving transparency within the oil industry will require international policy changes and regulations, the researchers say. They also emphasize the importance of providing incentives to reward businesses that meet high sustainability and traceability standards. 

“I think governments can provide regulatory reform that requires more transparency, more openness about where products came from, how they were produced,” says Meijaard. “We also call for a greater role of media and influencers to start helping give people the nuance that they deserve. We need to be much better informed about the trade-offs in any of these polarized debates that are happening around vegetable oils.” 

### 

This research was supported by funding from the Ferrero Group (Soremartec SA and Soremartec Italia). 

Cell Reports Sustainability, Meijaard et al., “No oil crop is inherently bad—But our thinking might be” https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-sustainability/fulltext/S2949-7906(25)00220-4

Cell Reports Sustainability (@CellRepSustain), published by Cell Press, is a monthly gold open access journal that publishes high-quality research and discussion that contribute to understanding and responding to environmental, social-ecological, technological, and energy- and health-related challenges. Visit https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-sustainability/home. To receive Cell Press media alerts, contact press@cell.com

  

Palm oil site.

Credit

Erik Meijaard

Journal

Cell Reports Sustainability

DOI

10.1016/j.crsus.2025.100524 

Method of Research

Commentary/editorial

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

No oil crop is inherently bad—But our thinking might be

Article Publication Date

16-Oct-2025