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Book Review |
K. G. Isaacson, J. D. Muir and R. T. Reed, Oxford : Wright, 2002, 124 pp, Softback + CD ROM, £37.99, ISBN 07236 1053 3
This is a textbook written by acknowledged experts in this field of orthodontics. For many, it will offer a memorial to a once great time of removable appliance orthodontics by demonstrating just how versatile this family of appliances is in expert hands.
For those in training, it provides a remarkable source of information covering biomechanics, appliance components, anchorage, the range of malocclusions that may be managed, and offering chair side tips on retention and the management of problem cases.
The text is clear and explicit, assuring you that if this is the only textbook you possess on removable appliances you will have more than enough information to be able to manage this class of appliances. The instruction sheet given to the patient at initial fitting is included for completeness. It may, like many such sheets, be written for the better educated. The index is clear and extensive.
However, what makes this offering of particular interest is the CD ROM, which demonstrates with novel software technology cases from start, through treatment to retention and allows the observer/reader the chance to see long-term follow-ups of treated cases—up to 20 years after the completion of active treatment.
The CD ROM is very easy to use, even for a Luddite, with cases presented by malocclusion. There is a useful magnification facility x4 and x10, the latter not often of much help.
Image quality is variable from very good to poor, particularly the photographs of appliances against black backgrounds, which are difficult to interpret. Some radiographs are very dark and not easy to interpret. The use of a cephalometric tracing is useful for those in training, but only reports on SNA, SNB, ANB.
Some might take issue in the interpretation of the Class I incisors with a reduced overbite, which might better be referred to as Class III.
Overall, this is an exceptional publication, which brings the printing press into a new era where, supplemented by computer imagery, the observer/reader gains a whole new world of information, which confirms the excellent results that may still be achieved with these appliances in wise and skilful hands.
Highly recommended.
Guy Butcher
Childhood Disability in a Multicultural Society
Barry Jones, Abingdon: Radcliffe Medical Press, 2003, 152 pp., Softback £23.50, ISBN 1-85775-941-9
This book examines the management of children with developmental disabilities in groups with ‘minority’ value systems, focusing on the author’s research with families of Hasidic Jews, but extrapolating the issues to other highly orthodox religious groups. The book examines how culture and religion influence concepts relating to disability and its management. In doing this, the book examines liberal societies’ accommodation and respect of patients’ beliefs as necessary and beneficial, questions whose interests need safeguarding, and considers the balance between patients’ rights to autonomy and the professional integrity and autonomy of medics. In addressing these issues, the book broadens its consideration from the doctor–patient relationship to include minority communities and host communities also.
The book is organized clearly and sensibly, addressing in turn a series of pertinent issues. Chapter 2 considers the definitions of impairment, disability and handicap, and concepts of health, illness and disease, in both conventional and functional ways. This provides a useful backdrop to the subsequent discussion. The following 2 chapters deal with how attitudes to disability are determined, first, according to cultural factors such as religion, education and national identity, and unraveling the logic of reactions that may jar to majority cultural views; and second, by looking at how each major western and eastern religion interprets disability, focusing on the place of culpability (both personal and community), but also of compassion and duty of care. Chapter 5 addresses concepts of harm, exploring the associated elements of this sometimes vague and abstract term, and setting it in a legal and policy context. In doing this, the author raises the difficult and uncomfortable questions thrown up by clashes in concepts of harm from different cultures. Chapters 6–10 focus on the interests and rights of different groups and individuals, each chapter focusing, in turn, on the patients, parents, the physician, minority groups and host communities. The author presents a broad conceptualization of ‘interests’ as both general, as well as medical, and highlights the conflicts that may arise between the different interested parties. Throughout, the author opens out specific case examples to broader notions of minority groups.
This book highlights and acknowledges the complexities and imprecisions of determining ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’, where a cultural mismatch may exist between minority groups and orthodox medicine. The book has an international perspective, drawing on laws and policies of a variety of countries. The issues are presented in an intelligent, thought provoking way, and the book is both detailed and well informed, not dodging uncomfortable issues or dismissing them lightly. The book refers to research undertaken by the author with a group of Hasidic Jews, but there is disappointingly little background given on this, especially given the assumed discrepancy between the author as researcher and the population he studied—a mismatch that is dealt with in other contexts elsewhere relating to doctor–patient relationships, but not reflexively as part of an account of the research process. The title of the book is somewhat misleading, as the book presents concepts relevant beyond treating children, and broader than disability to health and illness more widely, and the book would suit a readership wider than the focus of the title suggests. The book is useful as a single piece, but also as a series of stand alone essays, with each chapter addressing a discrete and well defined issue. In summary, the book provides a useful and thought provoking addition to the literature.
Kate Stewart
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