CRANIO: a 30-Year Perspectice in a 'Contentious Field' (Cranio Concepts) (Excerpt)
By CRANIO: The Journal of Craniomandibular Practice
- Release Date: 2012-01-01
- Genre: Engineering
Description
Welden Bell wrote the third guest editorial in our new journal, stating, "The Journal of Craniomandibular Practice is destined to be the 'mouthpiece' for an important segment of dentistry." I should have realized what the future would bring when I read the title of his thesis: "Peace by Common Consent," in which he suggested, "this forum can serve to help establish 'working peace' among divergent schools of thought, which is an obvious need." (1) For 30 years, the journal has tried to unite divergent schools of thought. The following are excerpted from editorials published in CRANIO over the years. In 1988, I wrote an editorial titled, "Intraprofessional Dueling" and related it to a former European practice that was outlawed in the United States after the Civil War. I summarized the professional disagreements: "just as in dueling, neither men nor techniques are necessarily all good or bad. We must be careful not to throw out all the old in the name of progress, or prohibit a natural experimentation with the new." (2) A year later, I reviewed "A Decade of Consensus Conferences," which included dental implants, third molars, pain, and anesthesia and sedation in the dental office. My summary was, "in the past they have clearly not involved an area [TMD] that is quite so broad in scope or so multidisciplinary in practice ... The identification of these problems is complex and the treatment of them varied. The logistics of establishing an appropriate panel and making lasting recommendations still remains a conjecture in advisability." (3)
