Advancement in biochemical diagnostics and regenerative medicine leading to integration of dentistry into 360° health program

Over the last decade, dentistry has taken many leaps influenced by scientific development in several collateral areas of research, including regenerative medicine and biochemical diagnostics. Hence, in this issue continuing our miniseries section, we have included a few articles in the broad areas of dentistry. Beginning this miniseries is an article assessing the medical knowledge among dental surgeons on the potential ocular complications of intraoral local anesthesia, which is a routinely used procedure in dental practice. It is indeed surprising to note that several gaps exist in the knowledge among clinicians that necessitate the need for more effective continuous professional development/educational programs. Although several such programs are currently available in various formats, it seems that these formats are not effective. Adopting traditional approaches of knowledge delivery (monographs, books, seminars, conference, etc.), may lead to ineffectiveness of these programs as often due to busy professional commitments these traditional formats of knowledge delivery may have practical limitations. One way to overcome this limitation may be the use of online education that has gained considerable momentum recently, with several corporates getting involved in developing platforms for delivering online education. The benefits of accessing the online educational resources at ones convenience will prove to be highly useful and efficient in continuous professional development/educational programs for busy clinicians. We hope the concerned professional organization gives some thought toward developing such vital and necessary online educational resources aligned to recent advancements and updates in the developing nations. We also have an article on the potential of bone grafts in promoting tissue regeneration, which may have several applications easily adoptable to dental clinical practice. Another article in this issue looks at a nonconventional approach to predict those patients prone to the development of dental caries using finger print patterns. Many studies have looked into association of finger print patterns with some clinical conditions. Such associations, if proved beneficial in predicting the disease development, may find immense applications in not only personalized medicine but also in adopting early intervention of preventive measures, a concept which we refer to as 360° health program (treating the patient rather than the disease). We also have included an article on the rugae patterns in a South Indian population, highlighting the utility and need to document such parameters in forensic dentistry and perhaps for understanding human evolution. Indeed another article in this miniseries discusses the estimation of predentin thickness in understanding developing and developed permanent teeth, thus supporting the role of developmental dentistry in understanding dental anomalies. In alignment with the 360° health program, an article in this miniseries reports the incidence of oral candidal inflection among patients with Down syndrome, which indeed highlights that while dental disorders may be associated with systemic conditions and vice versa, many systemic conditions are leading to or are associated with dental disorders.