Editor's Letter
From the Editor-in-Chief
Dear dental colleagues,
How we obtain and process information from our patients is essential to their health and to the effectiveness of our dental healthcare practice. Collecting this often huge amount of information can be time-consuming and less than efficient, as new protocols and systems are continually being developed and recommended. We need to arrive at the correct diagnosis or the appropriate risk assessment—to do this, we must organize and interpret self-reported information from patients and results from diagnostic tests, along with our own and our staff’s observations. We need a systematic approach that integrates easily into our busy practices. This system must promote proper and effective communication between the staff and the patient, between the dentist and the specialist, and among the staff at the practice.
Both of our CDE authors this month have developed and shared their own systems to deal with certain aspects of patient care. Our first article, “A Systematic Approach to Endodontic Diagnosis,” details a 13-step process to help the dental professional arrive at the correct diagnosis for odontogenic pain. The second article, “Caries Management in the Dental Practice,” focuses on the rationale and the process of integrating caries management by risk assessment into a general practice. In addition to our CDE articles, we are also publishing a special report that reviews research on the safety of dental amalgam and outlines the specifics of dealing with this material appropriately. This is another critical area of patient care that dental professionals need to monitor.
As the official publication of the Dental Council of India (DCI), Dentistry India is pleased to provide peer-reviewed CDE articles. Through this journal, our readers have an accessible, free method of earning CDE credits that are accepted and recognized by the DCI. The credits may be achieved by successfully completing the tests located on our website at http://www.dentistryindia.net. On the site, you and your colleagues are also invited to sign up for a free subscription. On behalf of the DCI and the board of Dentistry India, I encourage your comments and submissions to this publication and look forward to hearing from you. Thank you for your continuing support.
Sincerely,
Noshir R. Mehta, BDS, MDS, DMD, MS
Professor and Chairman
Department of General Dentistry
Director
Craniofacial Pain Center
Associate Dean
International Relations
Tufts University School of Dental Medicine
Boston, Massachusetts
Editor-in-Chief
Dentistry India