Redesigning Dentistry-A Perspective Based in History.

Why is dentistry set up separately from mainstream medicine? It seems unnatural. The reason is embedded in historical shadows, as for centuries, dental disease and its treatments were accompanied by excruciating pain and human misery. Early itinerant dentists were in demand because the need for relief was so urgent and great, resulting in dentistry became an independent profession. However, toothache may no longer be a significant public health problem. Despite some pressures from present-day interlopers such as osteopathy schools, dental and oral medicine can and should fold back into mainstream medicine as one of the natural units of medical care. While undoing the existing educational and organizational infrastructure may be a nearly impossible task, there may be a way these perceived obstacles can be circumvented. Those responsible for the administration of medical education should be encouraged to create pathways for their Doctor of Medicine (Medicinae Doctor ­ M.D.) -seeking students to pursue dental/oral medicine as a bona fide specialty of medicine. The time appears right for this redirection in dental education.

Digital pathology: Review of current opportunities and challenges for oral pathologists.

Whole slide imaging (WSI) has impacted the practice of pathology in the arenas of education, clinical practice, and research. With digital slides, pathologists can circumvent the limitations of traditional glass. Presently, digital pathology is primarily utilized for second opinion consults, clinical conferences, and education at select academic medical centers, with its mainstream adoption on the rise. However, challenges of adoption for oral pathologists are unique given the highly specialized nature of their work. The hurdles include the high-cost instrumentation and regular maintenance, need for additional training, changes in traditional workflow, and integration with present software. Given these barriers, it remains unclear the extent to which slide scanning and virtual pathology should be adopted by oral pathologists at this conjuncture. This review seeks to shed light on the current state of WSI and analyzes the opportunities and challenges for oral pathology in the rapidly evolving field of digital pathology.

The future of oral medicine.

Oral Medicine has been a specialty at the cross-roads of medicine and dentistry, not entirely recognized as a specialty by organized dentistry (at least in the US), and not embraced by medicine. This study makes a case for its place as a specialty of Medicine.

[Oral medicine in Israel: Current status and future directions].

The oral cavity-body relationships are bi-directional: oral diseases affect the welfare and health of the individual, while diseases and conditions of organs and tissues in the human body affect oral health. The global policy of the World Health Organization is to improve oral health in the 21st century as an integral part of promoting our general health. During the recent years the knowledge of the dental profession has grown exponentially and widened its fields of interest and this has led to impressive advances at both clinical and research levels. Oral medicine, which is a recognized, licensed specialty in Israel, is a definite example that reflects this process. In the last decade residency programs in oral medicine are in the process of constant increased demand. The authors discuss this trend and comment on the need to maintain excellence in this specialty.

Report on World Workshops on Oral Medicine (WWOM) IV and V: research themes and citation impact: WWOM VI steering committee.

The first World Workshop on Oral Medicine (WWOM) was held in 1988. The portfolio has continued to expand in scope and impact over the past 26 years. Five World Workshops were conducted between 1988 and 2010, focusing on creation of systematic reviews in biomedicine and health care of importance to the international oral medicine community. WWOM VI was conducted in April 2014 and further extended this modeling. This most recent Workshop also fostered creation of the inaugural joint meeting between the American Academy of Oral Medicine and the European Association of Oral Medicine, together with The British Society for Oral Medicine and the Oral Medicine Academy of Australasia. The goal of the WWOM portfolio is to strategically enhance international oral medicine research, education, and clinical practice. To this end, this report summarizes subject areas for WWOM IV (2004) and research recommendations for WWOM V (2010), as well as citation metrics relative to publications from these two conferences. The information is designed to provide research and clinical context for key issues in oral medicine as delineated by the WWOM portfolio over the past 10 years, as well as for projected outcomes of WWOM VI over the next 12 months.

[Gerontostomatology's topical issues in Russia at the present stage].

Gerontostomatology is one of the most important interdisciplinary sections of the medicine, studying mechanisms of aging of the chewing device of a person, and also carrying-out search of decisions in treatment of stomatologic diseases in persons of the senior age groups, at the same time increasing quality of their life. The article covers actual problems of modern gerontostomatology in Russia.

[Stomatologic complications of eating disorders]. / A pszichoszomatikus evészavarok sztomatológiai szövodményei.

Since the 1990s numerous international experts have reported about the somatic complications of eating disorders including those having a dental and stomatological nature. Several reports emphasised that deformations in the oral cavity resulting from this grave nutritional disease typical of the young generation could already appear in the early stage and, therefore, dentists are among the first to diagnose them. Dentists are still often unaware of the importance of their role in multidisciplinary treatment. Even if they knew what the disease was about and recognised it on the basis of deformations in the oral cavity in time, their advice that their patients should brush their teeth more often would fail to eliminate the root cause of the problem. Not only the earliest possible treatment of the complications of the bingeing-purging mechanism and the maintenance of oral hygiene are important, but controlling and curing pathological habits with active participation of psychiatrists are also required to ensure full recovery. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of the disease, manifold communication is required. For this reason, publishing the dental ramifications of organic and systemic diseases at dental conferences and in technical journals, as well as providing information about oral complications of eating disorders for general practitioners and specialists are particularly important.

[Contemplations on responsibility for oral healthcare]. / Bespiegelingen over verantwoordelijkheid in de mondzorg.

The academic dental education in The Netherlands has been extended to 6 years, among other reasons in order to make it possible for responsibility for oral healthcare to be borne in a wide medical context. It is the job of the 3 national dental schools to make this happen. The new dentist should know and recognize all (peri-)oral disorders and oral symptoms of systemic diseases, and he should be able to deliver oral healthcare to medically compromised patients. Accepting this responsibility is required for dentistry to be transformed into medical oral healthcare and for dentists to be upgraded to oral physicians.

An international survey of oral medicine practice: proceedings from the 5th World Workshop in Oral Medicine.

OBJECTIVES: (i) To define the current state of oral medicine clinical practice internationally, and (ii) to make recommendations for future modeling of the practice of oral medicine. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A survey was designed by an international panel of oral medicine experts to assess the current state of oral medicine practice internationally. The survey was sent to oral medicine experts across the world, and responses were electronically stored and analyzed using descriptive statistics. RESULTS: Two hundred respondents completed the survey representing 40 countries from six continents. The two most common settings for an oral medicine practice were in a hospital and a dental school. More than 88% of respondents considered management of oral mucosal disease, salivary dysfunction, oral manifestations of systemic diseases, and facial pain in the definition of oral medicine. CONCLUSIONS: (i) Oral medicine clinicians diagnose and manage a wide variety of orofacial conditions; (ii) There are significant differences in the definition of oral medicine clinical practice from country to country; (iii) India has the largest expansion of oral medicine services as defined by escalating numbers of clinicians within the specialty as compared with other countries; (iv) oral medicine practitioners have a wide range of professional responsibilities.

Advancing oral medicine through informatics and information technology: a proposed framework and strategy.

The implementation of information technology in healthcare is a significant focus for many nations around the world. However, information technology support for clinical care, research and education in oral medicine is currently poorly developed. This situation hampers our ability to transform oral medicine into a 'learning healthcare discipline' in which the divide between clinical practice and research is diminished and, ultimately, eliminated. This paper reviews the needs of and requirements for information technology support of oral medicine and proposes an agenda designed to meet those needs. For oral medicine, this agenda includes analyzing and reviewing current clinical and documentation practices, working toward progressively standardizing clinical data, and helping define requirements for oral medicine systems. IT professionals can contribute by conducting baseline studies about the use of electronic systems, helping develop controlled vocabularies and ontologies, and designing, implementing, and evaluating novel systems centered on the needs of clinicians, researchers and educators. Successfully advancing IT support for oral medicine will require close coordination and collaboration among oral medicine professionals, information technology professionals, system vendors, and funding agencies. If current barriers and obstacles are overcome, practice and research in oral medicine stand ready to derive significant benefits from the application of information technology.

[Oral medicine: a specialty placed between medicine and dentistry]. / Orale Medizin : Interdisziplinäre Zusammenarbeit zwischen Medizin und Zahnmedizin.

Oral medicine is a dental specialty that bridges the traditional areas of health between dentistry and medicine. International descriptions reflect this and oral medicine is defined as "the dental speciality placed at the interface between medicine and dentistry and is concerned with the diagnosis and management of (non-dental) pathology affecting the oral and maxillofacial region." Oral medicine specialists provide clinical care to patients with a wide variety of orofacial conditions, including oral mucosal diseases, orofacial pain syndromes, salivary gland disorders, and oral manifestations of systemic diseases. There is a growing need to implement this specialty globally: due to the rapid progress in both medicine and dentistry, and to the growing percentage of senior citizens in many countries, the adequate diagnosis and treatment of oral diseases will become even more complex in the future. In this article, the authors' intention is to point out that oral medicine is neither a recognized specialty nor a distinct field of study in Germany, Austria, or Switzerland; thus, the need for postgraduate training in this field in countries where oral medicine is not a specialization is emphasized.

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19): Emerging and Future Challenges for Dental and Oral Medicine.

The epidemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), originating in Wuhan, China, has become a major public health challenge for not only China but also countries around the world. The World Health Organization announced that the outbreaks of the novel coronavirus have constituted a public health emergency of international concern. As of February 26, 2020, COVID-19 has been recognized in 34 countries, with a total of 80,239 laboratory-confirmed cases and 2,700 deaths. Infection control measures are necessary to prevent the virus from further spreading and to help control the epidemic situation. Due to the characteristics of dental settings, the risk of cross infection can be high between patients and dental practitioners. For dental practices and hospitals in areas that are (potentially) affected with COVID-19, strict and effective infection control protocols are urgently needed. This article, based on our experience and relevant guidelines and research, introduces essential knowledge about COVID-19 and nosocomial infection in dental settings and provides recommended management protocols for dental practitioners and students in (potentially) affected areas.

[Research progress on platelet-rich fibrin derivatives].

Platelet-rich plasma and platelet-rich fibrin (PRF) are widely used in the field of stomatology. Advance-ments in preparation techniques and basic research have enabled the use of PRF derivatives in oral clinical applications. The evolution, preparation techniques, biological properties, and medical research progress of PRF derivatives are reviewed in this paper.

Oral medicine: Today's future can become tomorrow's reality.

There have been strategic clinical, educational, and research advances in the field of Oral Medicine over the past several decades. In many cases, Oral Medicine experts are contributing the lead role in these advances nationally and internationally. In addition, American Board of Dental Specialty recognition of Oral Medicine as a specialty in 2015 has positioned Oral Medicine professionals to substantively enhance the delivery of oral health care to medically complex patients as well. It is now important and timely to capitalize on this contemporary foundation, to advance the field of Oral Medicine in the United States for the next generation of Oral Medicine specialists and practitioners. This article provides the results of analyses of the present dynamics and economic opportunities, as well as solutions to existing perceived barriers.

[Condition and future of robotics in stomatology].

The successful research and application of robotic techniques will promote more dental practitioners to operate robotic simulation systems in various aspects as clinical practice, teaching and scientific research. This paper reviews the history and development of dental robotics in a systematic way. We specifically introduce the application conditions and estimate the future development of dental robotics. Besides, we also foresee the potential impact and change brought by dental robotic techniques.