Sir, I read with great pleasure Drs Watt and Serban's recent opinion paper in the BDJ, entitled Multimorbidity: a challenge and opportunity for the dental profession.1

I fully agree with the authors' sentiments that recognition of the 'multimorbidity' concept will advance efforts to integrate oral health within overall health and wellbeing and ultimately be of benefit to our patients. All through the article they highlight numerous specific benefits, including how this concept will contribute to a more patient-centred approach to patients.

As mentioned in one of the earliest articles comparing patient-centred and person-focused, or person-centred, approaches to care, patient-centred care '[g]enerally views comorbidity as a number of chronic diseases', while person-focused care '[o]ften considers morbidity as combinations of types of illnesses (multimorbidity).'2 Although there are great overlaps, patient-centred care is disease focused while person-centred care is focused on a person with diseases.3 This is an important distinction that further enhances the authors' call for oral healthcare professionals to embrace the concept of multimorbidity.

I want to congratulate Drs Watt and Serban for bringing the notion of multimorbidity to our attention, and I hope we will take to heart their rationale for including this concept in our efforts to provide safer, better and more appropriate patient care.

Drs Richard Watt and Stefan Serban respond: As the authors of the multimorbidity opinion piece, we would like to thank Dr Glick for his very supportive and constructive comments on our paper. Dr Glick raises an interesting point in relation to patient versus person-centred approaches to dental care. We were not familiar with the subtle but important differences between patient and person-centred care. We certainly agree with Dr Glick's view that person-centred care which focuses on a person with multiple diseases is preferrable to a disease-focused approach. As highlighted in our paper, multimorbidity is becoming a major priority for service development and research which will require innovative and collaborative approaches including ensuring that people with experience of living with multiple conditions are involved in all stages of development from design to dissemination.