Introduction to Contemporary Dental Pharmacology and Special Topics

Perhaps in no other dental-related discipline does information become outdated faster than in pharmacology, largely because of the increasingly rapid pace of new drug development for the management of systemic diseases. While new classes of drugs (e.g., sodium glucose co-transporter 2 inhibitors for type 2 diabetes) and biologic therapies (e.g., monoclonal antibodies) continue to improve medical therapy, little attention has been paid to improving drug therapy employed in the management of dental patients. There are a number of reasons for this, most significantly the extremely high costs associated with drug development and governmental approval. However, the advent of evidence-based dentistry has positively impacted the area of dental pharmacology and has led to an emphasis on high-level scientific studies when implementing decisions about dental treatment related to medications. Instead of serving as a comprehensive reference on the traditional topics related to dentistry, this work focuses on current scientific evidence related to specific areas of both medical and dental pharmacology with high impact on patient care. The goals of all chapters are to (1) inform the advanced dental practitioner about evidence-based drug therapy in dentistry and (2) to create a useful set of information resources from which the dentist may obtain current information in the future. The principles of pharmacology commonly found in standard textbook are not covered here; that information is found in several excellent textbooks currently available (Katzung BS, Trevor AJ (eds). Basic and clinical pharmacology, 15th ed. McGraw-Hill Education, New York, 2021).