Title: Integration of oral medicine & oral diagnosis into didactic and clinical teaching
Abstract:
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 specialty 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. Oral medicine is concerned with clinical diagnosis and non- surgical management of non-dental pathologies affecting the orofacial region. Many systemic diseases have signs or symptoms that manifest in the orofacial region. Pathologically, the mouth may be afflicted by many cutaneous and gastrointestinal conditions. There is also the unique situation of hard tissues penetrating the epithelial continuity (hair and nails are intra-epithelial tissues). The biofilm that covers teeth therefore causes unique pathologic entities known as plaque-induced diseases.
