Book review

It is now nearly 30 years since the first edition of this text book was published by one of the current authors, Edwina Kidd, accompanied at that time (1987) by Sally Joyston Bechal. For this fourth edition she is accompanied by Ole Fejerkov, both undoubted leading academics in the field of Cariology. The original textbook set out to do what it says on the tin, provide the undergraduate dental student with the ‘Essentials of Dental Caries’ to enable them to bring ‘basic theoretical concepts to the chairside’ to enable the understanding and ‘rationale behind clinical techniques’ and caries management. It sounds a bit like the term we have come to know, ‘Translational Research’ which the Medical Research Council describes as turning fundamental discoveries into improvements in human health and economic benefit and did not really appear in the Medical Literature until the early 1990s, some time after the first edition of this book was published!