Camile S. Farah - Contemporary Oral Medicine: A Comprehensive Approach to Clinical Practice

The dominant pattern of education of oral health professionals and provision of health care of oral and maxillofacial diseases throughout the world is provided by a separate dental profession frequently leading to the unfortunate separation of oral care from whole patient care.

In order to correct this deficiency, the specialty of oral medicine was pioneered by dentists including Lester Burket, Sol Silverman, Thomas Lehner, and David Mason, among others, who understood the growing importance of teaching medicine to dental students and developing a dental specialty devoted to the diagnosis and medical management of oral and maxillofacial disease as well as dental treatment for patients with complex medical disorders. Their vision and foresight resulted in the development of an international specialty devoted to the expanding medical needs of patients with oral and maxillofacial diseases.

Recent major medical progress has resulted in the development of new drugs and procedures to more successfully treat cancer, infectious diseases, and cardiovascular and neuromuscular diseases. These dramatic advances have resulted in an aging population taking multiple drugs and who often have undergone multiple surgical procedures to maintain their health. This has resulted in increasing the complexity of diagnosis and management of oral and maxillofacial diseases. In addition, the undergraduate medical education often includes minimal training of management of oral diseases and complications, broadening the scope of the disorders managed by oral medicine specialists.

There remains no doubt that all general and specialty dentists trained to care for patients in the twenty-first century will require a solid foundation in medicine and that proper care of complex medical problems of the maxillofacial region will require an increasing number of highly trained specialists in oral medicine to work closely with other medical, surgical, and dental colleagues.

Drs. Farah, Balasubramaniam, and McCullough have made an important contribution to oral medicine by organizing and writing a new, modern, comprehensive textbook developed for the oral medicine specialist but which also serves as an important reference for other dental and medical practitioners. The editors should be congratulated for their efforts and their choice of coauthors who are internationally recognized academics, researchers, and clinicians in their fields who have authored comprehensive, up-to-date, clearly written chapters.

The text starts with scholarly discussions of principles of diagnosis and focused discussions of clinical immunology, neurophysiology, and neurosensory disorders and then proceeds to detailed well-organized discussions of oral mucosal, head and neck, pain, and neurosensory disorders.

The sections on orofacial pain are very welcome, as physicians including headache specialists and those with a special interest in pain often have limited knowledge in this area. We are pleased to note that the orofacial pain sections are comprehensive and provide a welcome biopsychological approach to management which will be valuable not just to specialists in oral medicine but to a range of other health-care professionals.

It is encouraging to note the emphasis placed on a science-based approach to temporomandibular disorders as recent large studies provide evidence that they may be precursors of other chronic pain conditions requiring management by multidisciplinary teams.

The three of us are delighted to have been asked to write this foreword. We are based in three corners of the globe but all from English-speaking nations with a common educational heritage. We realize the challenges of writing a text devoted to providing the best oral and maxillofacial care to varied cultures, economies, and societies with differing disease burdens.

We congratulate the editors and authors of this text for their accessible and egalitarian approach and their major contribution to the progress of international oral medicine.

Philadelphia, USA Martin S. Greenberg

Gold Coast, Australia Newell Johnson

London, UK Joanna Zakrzewska

Oral medicine is that specialist branch of dentistry concerned with the diagnosis, prevention, and predominantly nonsurgical management of medically related disorders and conditions affecting the oral and maxillofacial region, in particular oral mucosal disease and orofacial pain, as well as the oral health care of medically complex patients. As such, it occupies a unique interface between dentistry and medicine, bringing them together for the advancement of both oral and systemic health. Progressive patient care in oral medicine requires a thorough understanding of many disciplines of medicine and dentistry. Likewise, other cognate disciplines benefit from their understanding of the art and science of oral medicine for overall patient management.