AMA Journal of Ethics

Some patients who need general medical care before a dental intervention can suffer increased risk for poor outcomes if they have compromised access to care.

A medical-dental schism from 1840 persists and prevents oral health’s integration with overall health, to many patients’ detriment.

Continued separation of dental and oral health from general medical care generates unnecessary prescriptions and pain management that are neither restorative nor responsive to patients’ primary complaints.

Poor oral health has been neglected as a public health threat, despite recognition as “epidemic” in scale by the US Office of the Surgeon General.

This brief visual and narrative history explains why dentistry exists outside medicine, rather than as a specialty within it.