International Journal of Orthodontia and Oral Surgery最新文献

The trend of the medical and dental professions toward an understanding of oral lesions, malformations, and diseases has progressed mainly because of vigorous research activities, supported by monies from appropriations, direct gifts, and endowment funds.

The dental school of today has a faculty composed of Doctors of Dental Surgery, Doctors of Medicine, and some members with both degrees; furthermore, the curriculum embraces several identical courses taught in the medical schools. Thus, the dental graduate of today not only understands the mechanics of dentistry, but he is also given a medical point of view, including the basic truths of modern scientific medicine. If you eliminate the craft of dental surgery and the mechanics of dentistry in a dental graduate's completed curriculum, you have remaining the science of medicine; to designate the latter dental medicine, must imply the practice of medicine through the dental profession. In the event he chooses to prepare himself for a specialty, he may take postgraduate study. However, if oral surgery is elected, then a hospital interneship will broaden his medical and surgical viewpoint. Professor Garretson of the University of Pennsylvania devoted his life establishing the field of oral surgery as a special branch, stating, “This specialty was that part of the medical and dental professions which overlapped.”

As early as 1839, the year when the first dental school was organized, Dr. S. P. Hullihen foresaw the necessity of an all-embracing medical, surgical and dental understanding: and by his professional career demonstrated that it was folly to attempt treatment of diseases of the mouth without appreciation of the complex mechanisms of the whole human organism.

• 1.

  Correlated according to the number of molars in each age group. As the age when each child was examined increased, the percentage of one and two molars lost in the respective age groups decreased. The contrary was true of the percentage of three molars lost, which increased with the rise in age at the time of examination from 15 to 18 years. The four molar percentage was fairly constant in the age groups from 15 to 18 years but increased at 18 to 19 years.

• 2.

  When correlated according to percentages showing 1, 2, 3 and 4 molars lost at the time of examination, the percentage frequency of distribution according to age at the time of examination, 15 to 19 years, was the same for the “one molar lost” group as for the “two molars lost” group. This type of correlation was true also of the three and four molars lost groups respectively.

• 3.

  When correlated to the age when the first molars were lost, we find the peak for the one molar group at age 13; the two molar group at 14 years; the three molar group also at 14 years and the four molar group at 15 years.

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• 4.

  The mandibular left first molar is most frequently lost. The mandibular right is second; the maxillary left, third and the maxillary right is fourth in order of decreasing frequency. What is the reason for this condition? Does it have anything to do with the side most frequently used for chewing? Is it related to right and left handedness? Why are the mandibular teeth more frequently lost? If the answer is that these teeth are the first permanent teeth to erupt, then the conditions present in the mouth of the child at that age should be better known to us. These questions have not as yet been satisfactorily answered. The average number of first molars lost is 1.88 per child examined.

• 5.

  At the time when the first and second premolars and the second molar in the 941 quadrants studied were examined, less than 1.5 per cent showed no movement (O-O-O position). Less than 1 per cent were in the O-D-O position. The percentage of D-D-O was greater in the mandibular than in the maxillary quadrants. The percentage of O-O-M positions was greater in the maxillary than in the mandibular quadrants. From 66 to 68.8 per cent of all quadrants showed the D-D-M position. There was hardly any difference between the right and the left quadrants in each jaw.

• 6.
  • (a)

    Fifty per cent of O-O-O were in the three-month interval group and 78 per cent within six months; none in O-O-O later than one year after extraction.

  • (b)

    O-D-O showed 84 per cent in the intervals within one year