Woelfel’s Dental Anatomy 8th Edition

Book Preface

Woelfel’s Dental Anatomy is primarily intended as a study guide for dental students, dental hygiene stu­dents, dental assistants, and dental laboratory techni­cians as they master the details of tooth morphology and their usefulness in the dental office. The book provides dental and dental hygiene students with basic knowledge required when answering dental anatomy questions on the national board examinations, but it goes well beyond by discussing the application of tooth morphology and terminology to the practice of dentistry. Chapters are included on periodontics, endo­dontics, restorative dentistry, and forensic dentistry. The book with its Power Point lecture slides and test items for teachers and its many learning exercises was designed for instructors of dental anatomy courses as a teaching manual during lectures, discussion periods, and laboratory sessions, as well as during early clinical experiences. It is also useful as a reference in the dental office.

NEW IN THIS EDITION

Most illustrations are now in color to highlight impor­tant features better than in past editions, and many new illustrations have been added as well.

The eighth edition is now organized into three parts. Part I, Comparative Tooth Anatomy, includes six chapters. The first chapter begins with an intro­duction to terminology and concepts related to tooth morphology that lays the foundation for the next four chapters on adult tooth traits. In these chapters, the author presents similarities and differences using drawings, photographs, and many summary tables. Primary teeth and their eruption patterns are discussed in Chapter 6. In order to make it easier for students to focus on the most important details of tooth anat­omy, specific data from Dr. Woelfel’s original research statistics were moved to the end of each chapter but can still be easily referenced by referring to the let­ters placed as superscripts throughout these chapters. Also, interesting facts related to ethnic variations and animal teeth were moved to separate sections at the end of the chapters.
Part II, Application of Tooth Anatomy in Dental Practice, has seven chapters. The first two chapters include a discussion of roots of the adult teeth related to periodontal procedures (with new illustrations on the use of instruments for removing mineral­ized deposits from unique contours on root surfaces) and endodontic procedures. Other chapters include a contemporary overview of ideal occlusion, operative and restorative dentistry, and forensic dentistry. Finally, there is an extensive discussion about many commonly encountered dental anomalies as well as a chapter designed to help students draw, carve, and sketch teeth.
Part III, Anatomical Structures of the Oral Cavity, includes two chapters. One chapter presents the relation­ship of the teeth to landmarks of the skull, the temporo­mandibular joints, and the muscles, nerves, blood supply, and lymph drainage associated with the oral cavity. The other chapter includes a description of normal oral struc­tures observed during a head and neck cancer screen­ing examination, and shows sites for injections for local anesthetic relative to the underlying nerve locations.

BOOK FEATURES

Each chapter includes methods designed to help you, the reader, master the content and put it to practice immediately.

• Topic list: Each chapter begins with a list of top­ics that are presented within that chapter. The topics are presented in the same order as the section out­line headings within that chapter.
• Leaming objectives: In each chapter, important learning objectives are presented to help you appre­ciate what you can expect to learn as you read. You can refer to the objectives to ensure that you are mastering the appropriate knowledge and skills.
• New terms: As each new term is encountered for the first time, it is highlighted in bold print and is defined within the text at that time, often with refer­ences to figures or diagrams to improve understand­ing. The bold print is helpful when using the text as a reference for understanding terms that can be found within the text’s index.
• Index (instead of a glossary): The extensive index has been used instead of a glossary since many terms in dentistry are best appreciated by referring to illus­trations or photographs for a complete understand­ing. In most cases, the first page where a term is referenced in the index is the page where you can find the term (in bold) and can refer to the suggested illustrations for the best learning.
• Pronunciations: New terms that may be difficult to pronounce have phonetic suggestions placed within brackets [like this] immediately after the word is first encountered.

• Review questions with answers: Many chapters or sections end with a series of review questions to test the learner’s mastery of the objectives. These ques­tions, in many cases, cover topics similar to those included on past dental and dental hygiene national examinations. For the convenience of quick and convenient feedback, the answers are presented immediately following the questions. Available for instructors who use this edition is a CD that includes a bank of additional test items.
• Learning exercises: Practically every chapter pro­vides the reader with a series of learning exercises. These exercises are presented within the body of each chapter at intervals where the authors feel an active learning experience would be helpful for you to understand and/or apply the topic. These exercises may suggest that you examine extracted teeth or tooth models, or skulls (or skull models), or perform specific self- or partner examinations. More advanced exercises (as in Chapter 13) provide methods for drawing and sketching teeth, and carv­ing teeth from wax, thus helping you to become inti­mately familiar with tooth shape and terminology.
• Summary Tables: Throughout the text, the authors have placed numerous tables to summarize the many facts presented within the text. These tables are help­ful when reviewing the highlights of content found within each section.
• Original illustrations and drawings: For complete understanding and clinical application of each topic, the authors have included a variety of photographs, illustrations, and original colorized drawings selected and designed to illustrate key points and improve learning. A number of new illustrations and sum­mary tables have been added to this edition, and all of the new illustrations are in color. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, it is critical that you refer to figures whenever they are referenced within the text in order to maximize your learning. Many figures are designed so you can cover up the names of struc­tures and test yourself. In some instances, important additional information is presented or clarified in the illustration legends. Also, on the Point compan­ion Web site, there is an image bank for instructors containing all of the illustrations and drawings in the text that can be used when lecturing.

• Appendix of comparative dental anatomy: This text’s unique appendix is designed to help the learner visualize the many tooth similarities and differences that are often difficult to understand with words alone. Each adult tooth class is referenced on two appendix pages. The first page includes traits (each trait is identified with a different letter) that are com­mon to all teeth within that class. The second page is devoted to the differences (each identified with a let­ter) between the types of teeth within each class and differences between teeth in each arch. Two addi­tional appendix pages are included that illustrate the unique characteristics of anterior and posterior pri­mary teeth. The layout on these pages makes it easy to compare the differences between teeth because views of each tooth type are lined up on the same page next to other teeth in that class. As each tooth characteristic is described within the chapters on tooth morphology (Chapters 1-6), reference is fre­quently made to the illustrated representation of that characteristic on an appendix page as follows: The word “Appendix” is followed by the page number and letter denoting items being discussed (for exam­ple, “Appendix la” refers you to the Appendix, page 1, item “a”). Appendix pages are printed on heavier, perforated paper to permit removal and placement in a separate loose-leaf notebook. When used in this fashion, these pages provide you with increased con­venience (since fewer page turns are required when referencing tooth characteristics within each chap­ter), easier learning (since the complex terminology used to describe each characteristic is best learned by visualizing that characteristic and comparing it to other similar teeth), and a separate study guide (since all labeled characteristics for each type of tooth are described on the back of each appendix page).

• Research data: This text is unique in providing you with both original and reviewed research findings based on the study of thousands of teeth, casts, and mouths. Information on crown and root dimensions was obtained from measurements of a convenient sample of 4,572 teeth extracted by Ohio dentists and studied by Dr. Julian Woelfel and his dental hygiene students at The Ohio State University between 1974 and 1979. The data from these studies are presented throughout the text by using superscript letters like this (dataA) that refer to the statistics listed by let­ters at the end of the chapters. For example, the text states that a mesial marginal groove is a distinguish­ing characteristic of the maxillary first premolarA, and at the end of the chapter under A, you are told that this occurred in 97% of the 600 premolars stud­ied, which means that, on the average, 3% may not have this groove, whereas only 3 7% of maxillary sec­ond premolars are likely to have this groove.

• The best resource for learning about teeth is a col­lection of as many intact extracted teeth as you are able to acquire. A dentist, if presented with a quart jar of bleach, will remember his or her own student days and will probably be glad to put extracted teeth in the jar. Do not expect these teeth to be clean or sorted out; sorting is your job. While handling these teeth, it is critical to follow the guidelines for infec­tion control presented here: