I was very excited to review this book. I am a small and exotic animal practitioner, and as I am sure is the case with most people in my field, dental issues are one of the most common issues we see.
The book is broken down into 12 Sections: Diagnostics, Techniques, The Practice of Dentistry, Oral/Dental Diseases (Developmental Oral/Dental Problems), Acquired Oral/Dental Diseases, Enamel and Dentin Problems, Endodontic Disease, Neoplasia, Trauma, Disorders Prevalent in Felines, Salivary and Other Special Problems, and Exotic Pets. There are 3 appendices and a glossary.
This book includes a chapter on exotic pets, which unfortunately, is very short (9 pages) and basic, lacking much practical “meat.” Information on the objective evaluation of skull radiographs of different exotic mammal species, including the length of roots, the positioning of the occlusal plane, etc. would have been very useful, but was not included in this book. I feel that the inclusion of this chapter on exotic pets may have been more for show than actual practical application.
I was happy to see that the book includes large-formatted color photographs, but strangely, many are quite blurry. This starts with Figure 1-1, where, for some reason, a simple photograph of an oral examination in a dog is blurry, and continues right through to Figure 60-1, of a rabbit with “slobbers.” I am surprised that efforts were not made to replace the blurry photographs with nice, high-resolution ones.
I had also hoped for a longer, more detailed section on dental blocks, including photographs with skulls and landmarks. I was disappointed that this was also one of the shorter chapters in the book (7 pages), and only included 3 photographs. For a book that is intended to be a practical reference, this was disappointing.
Overall, this book did not meet my expectations; therefore, I am not sure whether I should give it a strong recommendation. Some chapters were very detailed and interesting, and yet some key chapters were lacking. I found the chapter on dental charting quite handy, and will likely reach for it regularly. The chapter on dental X-ray positioning should also be helpful in acquiring tricky views and troubleshooting. I was very interested to read about trans-illumination of teeth to evaluate pulp health, as I had never heard of this technique before, and I am very interested to try it. I guess I would say that it would be an interesting book to have, but don’t expect it to be adequate as your only dental reference book.