Editorial

Modern dentistry

Vicente Ernesto González Cardín*

* Head of the Maxillofacial. Dept. National Cancer Institute Mexico City, México.

Modern dentistry has undergone several adjustments to adapt to demands of modern life. The various diseases intrinsic to these times, like cancer, aids, and the human papilloma virus compel our specialists to be better prepared to professionally treat this group of patients who nowadays arrive to our practices with different treatment requirements for the oral manifestation of their diseases. These different requirements can arise due to the inception of the disease, or as a secondary effect of the treatments undertaken to solve the range of alterations triggered by the main disease. As dentists, we are forced to improve our training to then be able to conclusively respond to the special needs of these patients.

The idea of dentistry as a science only concerned with restoring and replacing lost or deteriorated teeth has long been left behind. Current perspective of modern dentistry goes beyond solving this type of problems. The current trend is to consider the patient as a whole. Dentists as well as dentistry have evolved. This can be appreciated in the new diagnostic methods, recent treatment techniques, novel materials, new procedures for dental replacement and avant garde work instruments. All the aforementioned factors force us to immerse in the new dentistry world offered by our modern era.

The arrival of new specialties like Implantology and Anaplastology, among others, blend in to existing specialties and in some cases they supplement them.

None of these new specialties or under specialties is going to displace the techniques we all learned in the university classroom. These new techniques simply confirm the fact that we are facing new challenges, and that to do so we must prepare ourselves and thus become the XXI century dentistry professionals. We are forced to a high quality practice, and to offer our patients cutting edge solutions according to their expectations.

Study plans of universities offering Dentistry studies must also go hand to hand with these new options for diagnosis and treatment. These new plans must be updated so as to be able to train dentists, of the present day, no longer of the future. To keep at the forefront of the profession, study plans must encompass these subjects. All the aforementioned aspects have been duly considered within the career of Dentist of the School of Dentistry of the National University of Mexico.

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This article can be read in its full version in the following page: http://www.medigraphic.com/facultadodontologiaunam