Book Review
British Dental Journal 193, 480 (2002)
Published online: 26 October 2002 | doi:10.1038/sj.bdj.4801603
Reviews
Books, videos, cd-roms, dvds and any other relevant items submitted for a review in the BDJ should be addressed to: Mike Grace, Editor, British Dental Journal, 64 Wimpole Street WIG 8YS
BOOK REVIEWED - Tooth-colored restoratives: principles and techniques
- H. F. Albers
- London: BC Dekker Inc, 2002: 302 pp. US$129.00
1550091557
This book is easy to read and covers today's tooth-coloured plastic restoratives. Over the course of 300 glossy pages there are useful tips and large, helpful colourful diagrams. The book comes with its own CD-ROM containing the text and illustrations which may be of use to some readers.
The book includes the fabrication, materials science, setting reactions, adhesion and use of glass ionomer and their derivatives as well as composite resin. There are also short sections on general aspects of materials science, aesthetics, nomenclature, suggested instrumentation for a chairside tray, magnification and air abrasion.
Here is a book for those seeking to understand more about the materials they are using but I suspect many will want to fast-forward through the sections on how materials are made to the more clinical parts.
There are 400 illustrations of superb quality, mainly colourful schematic diagrams, many explaining in simple terms how materials are made, set and bond. Some of the bar charts are rather simplistic and occasionally misleading in not showing real data but instead use columns to neatly represent a concept and enable a simple comparison to be made. References to sources of actual data would be useful. In contrast, a figure showing damage to a monkey retina from the equivalent of a light cure source at twice the normal maximum output held only 3 mm away from the eye for 30 seconds is of no real educational merit. These minor points detract only slightly from a book that contains very useful material.
Information gathered from study groups has been used and most of the tips are excellent while others, such as using a gloved finger to shape composite resin, which may work well, could be questioned.
Dentists like to know the names of the materials, and usually a source as well, so while the author states the advantages of gold cements, a busy practitioner may find purchasing one time consuming. Likewise references to ADEPT reports and PhD thesis would be difficult for many to obtain.
Excellent coverage of the main tooth-coloured materials will be a helpful and informative read for undergraduates who are first coming into contact with these materials and for clinicians who need a refresher and can skip the more basic sections of the book. Other parts are very detailed such as the need to use different materials in class V abfraction and abrasion lesions.
The author comes across as enthusiastic and someone who enjoys dentistry and this is conveyed to the reader in this informative book.
B. Millar [BR5043]
Medicine and the internet – the essential guide for doctors
- B. C. McKenzie
- Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002: 296 pp. £19.95
0198510632
The prospective reader should not be put off by the narrowly-defined title Medicine and the internet and its even narrower sub-title The essential guide for doctors. This is a book which all healthcare workers, including dentists, could gain some benefits from. Now in its third edition, this splendid work presents the vast panoply of the world that is 'the internet' from a useful and readable perspective.
Beginning in the traditional way with the history of the internet, it progresses through essential subjects such as:
- using the internet to communicate,
- using the internet for clinical care (including evidence-based practice and telemedicine consultations),
- medical education (but with not much imagination could be translated into dental education),
- patient education
- using the internet for research including an excellent section on searching Medline,
- using the internet for publishing and commerce.
Each chapter is preceded by a short one or two page summary containing the main bullet points which it intends to discuss. These summaries are quirkily entitled in futuristic mixed case 'iNFOpulse', but I am unsure as to why they are called this and not simply 'overview' or even 'summary'.
The book is sensibly illustrated, often with screen captures. What is most important about this book is that it deals with every imaginable aspect of the internet, which obviously includes the world wide web, so there is much that an experienced web surfer or e-mail user could still glean from it. However, the most serious problem with books dealing with IT (or ICT) related subjects is that they become outdated faster than they are published: the first web link I tried had already been replaced by a different web site and automatically linked to another one. Other, non-medical aspects dealt with include such things as the difference between HTML and XML web markup languages and then XHTML and metadata. It could be argued that this is a book for computer anoraks only, but that would be depriving anyone interested in the internet (or most definitely, the novice user) the opportunity to study the whole range of aspects of this most essential of media.
Yes, it is irritating that this is aimed at doctors, yes it is irritating that, perforce, things described will be out of date by the time you read the book, but as a general overview of this fast moving phenomenon, it is a well written, illustrated and indexed reference work. It contains enough items of universal relevance to be of considerable value to many dentists too.
R. Farbey [BR5056]