Preface to the third edition

Like any proud parents we are surprised and delighted with the continued development of our ‘baby’, and we are grateful to all those who have helped or provided positive feedback. We are also grateful to our colleagues who have helped with the ‘baby-care’.

Of course, now being of school age, peer group rivalry has arrived, but ours is a robust child and despite being the first kid on the block welcomes both competition and change.

Some of this change is reflected by bringing in a new contributor who has overseen a complete overhaul of the restorative dentistry chapters and a large number of new contributions to reflect dentistry in the late 1990s.

Our own areas of (increasingly erudite) specialist expertise have grown apace but we think we have curbed the temptation to dwell on these in what is, after all, a generalist text for the earlier years; we trust the odd excursion will be forgiven.

We hope that the new sections, which include: evidence-based medicine/dentistry; the new NHS complaints procedure, objective structured clinical examinations, the 1997 Advanced Life Support Guidelines, and the completely revised restorative chapters will prove helpful and informative. We would, however, like to remind you that the blank pages are there for your additional notes—and it is this that makes your copy of this Handbook unique. Please do not hesitate to share these annotations with us, we would be happy to include the best we receive in the next edition and to acknowledge the contributor.

As always while we are grateful for the contributions of our colleagues the contents and the brickbats remain our sole responsibility.