Oral Medicine Residency

Dentistry originated as a subspecialty of medicine, but it evolved into a separate healthcare profession in the middle of the 19th century. The subsequent isolation from the profession of medicine has resulted in voids in the training of both physicians and dentists, with an impact on healthcare delivery in this country as well. The faculty of the Department of Oral Medicine feels that the discipline of oral medicine as we define it - to include its role in dental education, practice and research-is the primary interface of medicine and dentistry. As such it is as challenging as any area of dental practice, and that it requires formal and extensive training in the hospital setting.


The general population in the United States includes an increasing number of people with medical conditions that require special consideration by the dental practitioner. Among these are patients receiving cancer chemotherapy and /or radiotherapy, heart valves or organ transplants and those taking a variety of medications. Our new, hospital-based oral medicine residency stresses the interrelationship between oral disease and systemic health, the recognition and management of oral conditions and disease, and the dental management of medically compromised people. Our goal is to develop the resident's clinical competence, such that participants can manage patients with systemic implications for dental treatment, to include those who must be managed in nontraditional dental healthcare settings (e.g., operating room, bedside).

The Field Of Oral Medicine

Oral medicine is defined by the American Academy of Oral Medicine as
"The specialty of dentistry concerned with the oral health of medically compromised patients and with the diagnosis and nonsurgical management of medically-related disorders or conditions affecting the oral and maxillofacial region."

This definition implies that oral medicine has two distinct activities in the US:

1. The dental management of medically compromised patients and
2. The diagnosis and management of a wide variety of nonsurgical conditions of the intraoral hard and soft tissues, to include facial pain, salivary gland disorders, vesiculobullous diseases, and other oral soft tissue lesions that may be either primary in origin or oral manifestations of systemic disease. Although both of these activities are described in the formal AAOM definition, we feel that the training necessary to approach a level of competence in both areas requires hospital-based training.