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Improving dental practice through preventive measures
Book reviews
Improving Dental Practice Through Preventive Measures. By Joseph L. Bernier and Joseph C. Muhler. Ed. 2. St. Louis, 1970, The C. V. Mosby Company. 443 pages, illustrated, indexed. Price $23.75. This second edition is a progressive attempt to motivate more general practitioners of dentistry to organize their practices for total patient health care through preventive dentistry. Most of the individual chapters are well written with excellent clinical photographs, radiographs, line drawings, and charts. Several pages are devoted to tables of statistics which will be interesting to statisticians and researchers, but these tables are not too practical for the busy general practitioner. The eighteen chapters detail extensively various individual aspects of preventive dentistry. Since different contributors have written separate chapters, the book has the same fragmentated pattern with which dental education is castigated in Chapter One. Unfortunately no chapter stresses a complete survey of a patient from dental-medical history through treatment to recall-maintenance. The first chapter touches on treatment planning as “philosophy in action,” but the first and one of the most important aspects of preventive dentistry, the patient’s history, is not mentioned here. This procedure for total health care does not appear until page 347 in Chapter 15, “Preventive Oral Pathology.” Perhaps a Chapter 19 summarizing or even “cookbooking” preventive dentistry without the excessive details would give continuity to the subject for a comprehensive understanding for the general practitioner. The other detailed chapters could then be used for what they are-excellent, specific references. This book has very good pagination, and the printing quality is excellent. The paper is such good quality that it tends to reflect light. The hard binding is very durable. In separate chapters by different authors, this book details the various aspects of preventive dentistry and how these measures should be used in total health care planning. Any practitioner who is contemplating the conversion of his practice from reparative dentistry to preventive dentistry should read it. GEORGE R. APP, D.D.S.,
Dental Plaque. By W. D. McHugh. Great Britain, pages, illustrated, indexed. Price $16.00.
1970, D. C. Thompson
& Company.
M.S.
298
This book is a compilation of the papers presented at a Symposium on Dental Plaque held at the University of Dundee, Sept. 22-24, 1969. The object of the book is to report the current activity in the research of dental plaque in order to define the present state of knowledge of dental plaque and to form a basis for future investigations. The book is well organized in the same manner as the symposium: five aspects of dental plaque research are reviewed for recent research followed by the presentation of reports of previously unpublished research. General and detailed discussions conclude each session. The five sessions covered are development of dental plaque, the structure of dental plaque, the biochemistry of dental plaque, the bacteriology of dental plaque, and prevention and control of dental p!aque. The introduction by W. D. McHugh is an excellent narrative reference. The 162 illustrations are of excellent quality, and like the 56 tables, they are placed strategically within the text. This book is of first quality in printing, paper, and hard binding. This report of the Symposium on Dental Plaque makes available the most current research on five aspects of this subject. It will be an important reference for anyone interested in rcsearch in this field. GEORGE R. APP, D.D.S.,
M.S.
341
Improving Dental Practice Through Preventive Measures. By Joseph L. Bernier and Joseph C. Muhler. Ed. 2. St. Louis, 1970, The C. V. Mosby Company. 443 pages, illustrated, indexed. Price $23.75. This second edition is a progressive attempt to motivate more general practitioners of dentistry to organize their practices for total patient health care through preventive dentistry. Most of the individual chapters are well written with excellent clinical photographs, radiographs, line drawings, and charts. Several pages are devoted to tables of statistics which will be interesting to statisticians and researchers, but these tables are not too practical for the busy general practitioner. The eighteen chapters detail extensively various individual aspects of preventive dentistry. Since different contributors have written separate chapters, the book has the same fragmentated pattern with which dental education is castigated in Chapter One. Unfortunately no chapter stresses a complete survey of a patient from dental-medical history through treatment to recall-maintenance. The first chapter touches on treatment planning as “philosophy in action,” but the first and one of the most important aspects of preventive dentistry, the patient’s history, is not mentioned here. This procedure for total health care does not appear until page 347 in Chapter 15, “Preventive Oral Pathology.” Perhaps a Chapter 19 summarizing or even “cookbooking” preventive dentistry without the excessive details would give continuity to the subject for a comprehensive understanding for the general practitioner. The other detailed chapters could then be used for what they are-excellent, specific references. This book has very good pagination, and the printing quality is excellent. The paper is such good quality that it tends to reflect light. The hard binding is very durable. In separate chapters by different authors, this book details the various aspects of preventive dentistry and how these measures should be used in total health care planning. Any practitioner who is contemplating the conversion of his practice from reparative dentistry to preventive dentistry should read it. GEORGE R. APP, D.D.S.,
Dental Plaque. By W. D. McHugh. Great Britain, pages, illustrated, indexed. Price $16.00.
1970, D. C. Thompson
& Company.
M.S.
298
This book is a compilation of the papers presented at a Symposium on Dental Plaque held at the University of Dundee, Sept. 22-24, 1969. The object of the book is to report the current activity in the research of dental plaque in order to define the present state of knowledge of dental plaque and to form a basis for future investigations. The book is well organized in the same manner as the symposium: five aspects of dental plaque research are reviewed for recent research followed by the presentation of reports of previously unpublished research. General and detailed discussions conclude each session. The five sessions covered are development of dental plaque, the structure of dental plaque, the biochemistry of dental plaque, the bacteriology of dental plaque, and prevention and control of dental p!aque. The introduction by W. D. McHugh is an excellent narrative reference. The 162 illustrations are of excellent quality, and like the 56 tables, they are placed strategically within the text. This book is of first quality in printing, paper, and hard binding. This report of the Symposium on Dental Plaque makes available the most current research on five aspects of this subject. It will be an important reference for anyone interested in rcsearch in this field. GEORGE R. APP, D.D.S.,
M.S.
341