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BOOK REVIEW
The Orthodontic Treatment
of Impacted Teeth by Adrian Becker
| Why waste valuable time, effort and money
using trial and error in perfecting your deimpaction techniques when you
could learn from an expert? That was my conclusion after reading Professor
Becker's brilliant book.
I have been treating impactions for the past twenty-five years, so what new information could I hope to receive from Professor Becker? Was I in for a surprise! Professor Becker is not only a fine clinician, but a true innovator and an academician. He is able to give in-depth evaluations of the vast majority of impactions we see in clinical practice. He then demonstrates how he, or his colleagues, have treated a particular case. The pathophysiology of impactions is presented in a very clear and concise manner, so that the reading experience is like attending a series of lectures from your most memorable orthodontic instructor. The information is absorbed quite effortlessly because of the logical way the material has been organized and edited. In one chapter we are given a lesson in diagnosing and classifying the various maxillary canine impactions into six categories. Category 1, the least difficult, to category 6 being the most challenging. I might have intuitively known this, but it certainly helps to codify it and to then be able to see the recommended ways of treating each of the categories. Becker discusses the case of a transposed maxillary lateral and canine and offers four different possible solutions to correct this transposition. Clinicians can cherish this book for the value of having a readily available second opinion in difficult impaction cases. I would recommend that the next edition have a diagrammatic deimpaction vector analysis. The author could use the analogy of navigating a boat into a slip, without bunking into other boats. One needs to demonstrate that a straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it can also lead to root resorption of adjacent teeth. I was intrigued by the different methods of deimpaction that were illustrated and decided to try one of the techniques. I used a heavy base arch and a piggybacked auxiliary archwire that was tied as close as possible to a newly exposed palatally impacted canine (Pgs. 124-5). The auxiliary wire provided a constant and rapid force compared to my use of elastic thread from a base arch. I loved using this "pearl" and have now incorporated this into my armamentarium. Chapter 5 discusses impacted maxillary centrals and in it the author offers some unique methods and innovations. We see where he successfully treats teeth most of us would have readily extracted. Would you treat dilacerated incisors or recently traumatized and severely displaced incisors? Would you attempt to deimpact an incisor that had been buried in the floor of the nose for years, due to trauma at age 3? See what can be done! Cleidocranial Dysplasia (formerly Dysostosis) in which there are delays in eruption as well as numerous impactions and supernumerary teeth. Wouldn't it be nice to have a systematic manner of treating these type of cases? If you have treated a CD case, then you recall that you had very little guidance from the literature. No longer! I wish to thank Professor Becker for authoring this textbook. His contribution to our beloved orthodontic profession is profound. Every student, teacher or clinical orthodontist that refers to this tome will be a better practitioner because of his efforts. If anyone has any questions of Professor Becker, please email me at: Braces@J51.com and we will post the questions and answers beneath this review and, hopefully, improve our overall knowledge on this subject. Gary E. Roebuck, DDS, MSD
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Marketed in the US by: Tel: 212-760-0888 Outside the US available from Martin Dunitz, Ltd. Tel: +44-171-482-2202 |
