Main

This chapter will list some of the main dental resources on the Internet. It is impossible to create a complete list and I apologise beforehand if I have missed out your favourite dental site. I have tried to group the resources and websites into main categories, but there is inevitably a great deal of overlap.

Nowadays, most dental institutions, societies and companies have a web presence. The minimum amount of information that they contain normally consists of such things as their mission statement/goal, details of key people, contacts, links, events and news items. The websites I have included here have some extra feature or content that makes them an even more valuable resource for the dental team. Examples of 'extra resources' include access to online journals, databases, clinical guidelines, case studies, CAL programs and other software. Most downloadable information from these sites is presented in the form of pdf files and Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to open these files. Additional software required to view videos and animations is covered in a later section.

Most of the resources listed here are freely available, although some sites do require registration first. Other sites (mainly dental societies and journals) require a paid membership to access all the information and I have tried to indicate where this is the case.

Under UK law, copyright material sent over the Internet or stored on web servers will generally be protected in the same way as material in other media. Anyone wishing to put copyright material on the Internet, or distribute or download material that others have placed on the Internet, should ensure that they have the permission of the owners of the material unless copyright exceptions apply. Material covered by copyright includes literary and artistic material, photographs, music, films, sound recordings, broadcasts, software and multimedia. Copyright is just one part of the bigger picture of intellectual property; more information can be found on the UK Patent Office website.1

Some organisations, such as the NHS National Library for Health and the Faculty of General Dental Practice (UK), use an Athens account for members to access their web pages. Athens is a third party organisation that provides secure web access management for many education and health sectors in the UK. It enables users to access numerous web-based services with a single sign-on. To be eligible for an Athens account you have to be a dentist involved in 'NHS care'. To register online for a personal Athens account, go to https://register.athensams.net/nhs/.

Main dental disciplines

American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry

http://www.aapd.org/

This has a large section on policies and guidelines, a patient information area and the contents and abstracts from the AAPD Journals, some going as far back as 1979.

American Academy of Periodontology

http://www.perio.org/

As well as articles for patients, this website has a professionals' section that contains a list of about 30 clinical and scientific papers. These documents cover such topics as guidelines, parameters of care, position papers and Academy statements. The Journal of Periodontology and other resources are only accessible to members.

American Association of Endodontists

http://www.aae.org/

This website has a good section on advice for patients, while dentists can access information about the Association's guidelines and position statements. There is also a series of regular newsletters called Endodontics: Colleagues for Excellence.

British Association for the Study of Community Dentistry

http://www.bascd.org/

The information on this website is clearly laid out and there is easy access to guidelines, policy documents and the results of annual surveys. There is a link to the journal Community Dental Health.

British Society for Disability and Oral Health

http://www.bsdh.org.uk/

This small website contains guidance policies as well as the contents and abstracts from the Journal of Disability and Oral Health (access to the full text being restricted to members).

British Society of Oral Medicine

http://www.bsom.org.uk/

For dentists, there is a list of oral medicine units in Great Britain with helpful background information and maps. For patients, there are advice sheets covering common oral diseases and links to patient support groups and other sources of information.

British Society of Paediatric Dentistry

http://www.bspd.co.uk/

The society website has access to about 20 policy statements and clinical guidelines.

Comprehensive Care Media Library

http://www.comprehensivecareone.net/

Developed by the endodontist Dr Kenneth Serota, this site has been created to provide a digital library of information covering the main dental disciplines (Fig. 1). It aims to 'further the collaborative educational process for the practitioner and the patient alike'. It contains Word documents, pdf files, PowerPoint presentations, images and videos.

Figure 1
figure 1

The Comprehensive Care Media Library website

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Dental Ethics (American College of Dentists)

http://www.dentalethics.org/

Complete the free online course on the topic of dental ethics.

Faculty of General Dental Practice (UK)

http://www.fgdp.org.uk/

Members have online access to the journals Primary Dental Care and Team in Practice from where they can complete the CPD quiz. (Also see the link under dental study/research).

HIVdent

http://www.hivdent.org/main.htm

This website is a great resource for the dental team and for people living with HIV/AIDS.

International Centre for Evidence-Based Oral Health

http://www.eastman.ucl.ac.uk/∼pdarkins/iceph/

ICEBOH is a research-based organisation developing the best evidence for prevention, diagnosis and treatment in oral healthcare with a particular interest in periodontal diseases and implantology. There is access to a list of systematic reviews.

Mouth Cancer Foundation

http://www.rdoc.org.uk/

This award-winning and well put together website, founded by Vinod K Joshi, aims to help patients, carers and health professionals find free information on mouth cancers (Fig. 2). It has a very active online support group. The website excels and should be used as a benchmark by which to judge other health websites.

Figure 2
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The Mouth Cancer Foundation website

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Oral Cancer Prevention and Detection (Glasgow Dental School)

http://www.gla.ac.uk/Acad/Dental/OralCancer/

This online learning resource includes clinical photographs, a guide to clinical examination, patient counselling, the referral process and a short online quiz.

Oral pathology atlas and web cases

http://www.uiowa.edu/∼oprm/

The University of Iowa College of Dentistry has produced an online atlas of oral pathology that shows a number of clinical conditions and their related histopathology. There is also a selection of about 60 case studies of dental patients.

Oral and maxillofacial surgery case of the month

http://www.dental.washington.edu/oralpath/caseofthemonth/introduction.htm

The University of Washington's Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and Pathology have compiled an online 'case of the month' for every month going back to January 2004. Read through the history, findings and tests and then see if you can select the right diagnosis.

RxRoots.com

http://www.rxroots.com/

This endodontic website and newsgroup forum from Canada is regularly kept up-to-date. There are about 100 pdf files and a number of video presentations covering a wide range of endodontic subjects.

Dental and medical organisations

Academy of General Dentistry

http://www.agd.org/

Founded in 1952 and based in Chicago, the AGD aims to promote better public oral health and foster continuing professional development. It has 35,000 members and the website provides access to General Dentistry, the AGD's peer-reviewed journal, and AGD Impact, the AGD's news magazine. The DART section (dental article review and testing) has about 20 downloadable articles; members and non-members can pay to take a test to earn continuing education credits. For patients there are over 70 oral health sheets and the SmileLine Online message board for asking dental-related questions.

British Dental Association

http://www.bda.org/

The easiest way to navigate this large site is via the Quickmenu drop-down box. There is a wealth of resources available (mainly to members), including over 50 downloadable practice management advice sheets, the Media Centre for the latest dental news and access to information from the BDA Library online catalogue.

British Fluoridation Society and FluorideInformation.com

http://www.bfsweb.org/ and http://www.fluorideinformation.com/

These sites are packed with useful information and up-to-date links. The second edition of One in a Million, consisting of over 100 pages of facts about fluoride, can be downloaded in individual chapters from the BFS.

British National Formulary

http://www.bnf.org/

Access to the latest edition of the BNF (Fig. 3) is either by a simple free registration process or by using an existing Athens account. Try the handy Interactions Search utility. Information on the site is updated every six months. In the future, it is planned to add extra online content that is not possible to put into the published version.

Figure 3
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The Dental Practitioners' Formulary page on the BNF website

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Business Services Authority Dental Practice Division (formerly the Dental Practice Board)

http://www.dpb.nhs.uk/

There really is a mass of information contained within this site. Topics include DPB statistics for the general dental service in England and Wales and an archive of DPB publications. There are also sections with information for patients, primary care trusts and suppliers of dental computer software.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

http://www.cdc.gov/

This site from the United States has extensive coverage of health and safety issues, including the control of cross infection in the dental setting.

Clinical Knowledge Summaries

http://www.cks.library.nhs.uk/

Clinical Knowledge Summaries provides an up-to-date source of clinical knowledge aimed to help healthcare professionals and patients in managing the common conditions generally seen in primary care. The clinical knowledge section offers advice on the management of common medical conditions, including quite a few that will interest dentists, such as dental abscess, aphthous ulcers, oral candida, trigeminal neuralgia, sinusitis, suspected skin cancer and wisdom teeth removal.

Dental Protection and Dental Defence Union

http://www.dentalprotection.org/ and http://www.the-mdu.com/section_Dental_professionals/index.asp

These dental defence organisations both have a variety of useful information on their websites. Much of the information on the DP site is freely accessible; however you require membership registration to access most of the material at the DDU site. The DDU site runs a free online risk assessment tool for members.

Department of Health

http://www.dh.gov.uk/

The easiest way to use this site is by typing the word 'dentistry' into the site's search box. This will then list the relevant content in order of relevance. One can also use the advanced search feature to rank the information by date. The Chief Dental Officer's section contains information relating to the current reform of NHS dentistry.

FDI World Dental Federation

http://www.fdiworldental.org/

This extensive website has a resources section where a database of National and International guidelines, statements, position papers, proceedings & meta-analyses are kept. There are back issues of Developing Dentistry, a biannual magazine on oral health and oral health care development. There is also an up-to-date World directory of dental schools and a section on dental facts and figures from around the world.

General Dental Council

http://www.gdc-uk.org/

From the GDC website it is possible to search the registers of dentists, dental hygienists, therapists, nurses, technicians, clinical dental technicians and orthodontic therapists who are registered to practise in the UK. It also has a section for searching the specialist lists. In addition, there is access to the main GDC publications such as Fitness to Practice and copies of the GDC Gazette.

Health Protection Agency radiation protection division

http://www.hpa.org.uk/radiation/

This website has an animated section on understanding radiation, which clearly explains the main types of radiation that a person can be exposed to. There is also a section specifically on medical radiation.

National Library for Health

http://www.library.nhs.uk/

The National Library for Health (Fig. 4) is working with NHS libraries to develop a digital library for NHS staff, patients and the public. There are good links to valuable resources, but the home page suffers from 'information overload' and it can be confusing when some of the links from the main headers take you to a completely different website.

Figure 4
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The National Library for Health website

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Dental Universities

Eastman Dental Institute

http://www.eastman.ucl.ac.uk/

From the home page, click on education and then resources. From here you can work through some of the computer-assisted learning material (including the Radiography in Dental Practice course). There is also the clinical picture archive; read the copyright notice regarding permission for using the images.

University of Birmingham School of Dentistry

http://www.dentistry.bham.ac.uk/fordentists/

Birmingham School of Dentistry offers dentists some good online resources. There are 19 CAL programs and also a sample of some of the school's undergraduate Ecourse web-based learning pages. In conjunction with LearnDirect there is free online IT training for the local dental team. There is a tool for creating a professional development plan and a link to the PREP panel (product research and evaluation by practitioners).

Dental and Medical Journals

BioMed Central Oral Health (open access)

http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmcoralhealth/

BioMed Central (BMC), based in the UK, publishes many online peer-reviewed original research journals. BMC Oral Health covers all aspects of the prevention, diagnosis and management of disorders of the mouth, teeth and gums, as well as related molecular genetics, pathophysiology and epidemiology. All articles are published without barriers to access.

Blackwell Munksgaard Publishing

http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/Dentistry/

There are currently about 20 dental journals and 30 dental textbooks listed. There is access to abstracts of the dental journals for non-subscribers. Free sample book chapters and sample journal articles can be accessed online.

British Dental Journal

http://www.nature.com/bdj/

To take advantage of all the membership features of the site (Fig. 5) you have to first login via the BDA website, using your BDA username and password. The abstracts and full text of all articles published in the BDJ are available from 1999 onwards. The tables of contents for most issues are available from 1970 and selected abstracts are available from 1988 onwards. Access to all items is free to members of the BDA. There are links to the jobs and classified adverts section, to Vital (the magazine for the whole dental team) and to the journal Evidence-Based Dentistry. There is also a link to the continuing professional development website, which is a partnership between the BDJ and Eastman Continuing Professional Development. Dentists can answer four multiple-choice questions from two recent papers in the BDJ to gain verifiable CPD.

Figure 5
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The BDJ homepage

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British Medical Journal

http://www.bmj.com/

After ten years of allowing totally free online access to its journal, the British Medical Journal started a process of partial access in 2005. At the moment, all original research articles and selected other articles are freely available on bmj.com and accessible from the moment of publication. The full text of all other articles requires a subscription for the first 12 months, after which they are freely accessible. However, full online access can be bought for as little as £23.50 per year. The site has its own fully-featured search engine to find past articles; results are automatically put into subject indices through collaboration with the Vivismo search engine. The series link is very useful as it shows a list of the main series published in the BMJ since 1994. There will be something of interest here to any dentist, whether it is looking at oral health, some other medical condition, or else delving into the areas of clinical governance, medical ethics, statistics or 'how to read a paper'.

Since January 2007, the BDJ website supports advanced online publication of research papers. It also contains the complete versions of the research summary papers that now appear in the printed journal.

Community Dental Health

http://www.dundee.ac.uk/dhsru/cdh/index.htm

The contents and abstracts from this journal are viewable back to 1998. Reports of the scientific meetings for the European Association of Dental Public Health and the British Association for the Study of Community Dentistry can also be accessed from this site.

Dental Implant Summaries

http://www.dentalsummaries.com/dis/index.htm

This online journal contains summaries of key articles on implant dentistry and related research from over 40 peer-reviewed journals. Online subscription costs £65 per year; non-subscribers can browse through a large number of free, full-text summaries.

Dental Update

http://www.dental-update.co.uk/

Members can access all Dental Update articles and the back catalogue of self-assessment questions since 1999. Online articles can be searched using keywords in the title/abstract, by author and the year of publication. Answering the CPD questions in each issue can earn 40 hours of verifiable CPD per year.

Directory of Open Access Journals (open access)

http://www.doaj.org/home

This site provides free access to quality controlled open access journals. Their definition of open access is 'journals that use a funding model that does not charge readers or their institutions for access'. It currently lists 14 journals categorised under the subject of dentistry in the English language, including the two listed in this section.

Elsevier Health Sciences Periodicals

http://journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/home

Use the drop-down box to browse by the speciality of dentistry and you will see that there are currently 18 dental journals listed. Most of the links allow you to see content and read abstracts, but access to the full text is only available to paid members or by pay-per-article (of about $30).

Journal of Contemporary Dental Practice (open access)

http://www.thejcdp.com/

The Procter & Gamble Company publishes this bi-monthly peer-reviewed online journal (Fig. 6) and access to every article going back to 1999 is free. The online journal tries to utilise its online advantage by encouraging authors to include animations, short video clips or sound recordings where relevant.

Figure 6
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The website of the Journal of Contemporary Dental Practice

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Journal of Dental Education (open access)

http://www.jdentaled.org/

The American Dental Education Association publishes this journal; there is free access to contents and abstracts and the ability to search the full text of articles. This is just one of many journals that are assisted in their online publication by Highwire Press, a division of Stanford University Libraries. HighWire Press has the reputation for helping to disseminate free full-text life science articles on the web (http://highwire.stanford.edu/).

Journal of the Canadian Dental Association (open access)

http://www.cda-adc.ca/jcda/index.html

From this website, you can view the full text of all the articles from the journal. The archive goes back to 1998 and the articles are downloaded as pdf files. The site has recently added PowerPoint presentations which compliment some of the articles.

Quintessence Publishing

http://www.quintpub.com/journals/journals.php3

There are about a dozen journals listed, which are available online. The full text of articles is only available to members; abstracts are free to view. There are also links to dental textbooks, CD-ROMs and DVDs.

Dental Companies

British Dental Trade Association

http://www.bdta.org.uk/

This is a very useful site with a directory of BDTA members, a product locator, a jobs section and a register of dental engineers.

Dental Didactics

http://store.yahoo.com/dentaldidactics/

Based in California, this website has online courses for dentists, hygienists and nurses. Download the course, submit the test and receive the completion certificate by email. There are currently about 30 courses on offer, costing around $15 per course.

Dental Reality

http://www.realityesthetics.com/

In 2007, the Reality Annual (a massive printed manual consisting of the evaluation of hundreds of dental products, materials and equipment) was transformed into Reality Online. Converting the printed monolith into a downloadable version has reduced the cost of buying the resource, especially for overseas users. There is also the advantage that it can be continually updated.

Dentaltown

http://www.docere.com/

Docere is the new home of Dentaltown and its related communities. Follow the link to Dentaltown and look at the FAQ section to get an idea of the various resources contained within this free site: monthly magazine, message boards, case presentations, study clubs, classified ads and online continuing education. Members are encouraged to vote in a regular dental poll; recent issues have covered such topics as cosmetic dentistry, orthodontics and lasers.

Smile-on

http://www.smile-on.com/

This very popular UK dental website (Fig. 7) is probably best known for its online courses, articles and news feature. Other major products include the Key Skills in Primary Dental Care, DNNET – NVQ in dental nursing and the clinical governance programme.

Figure 7
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The Smile-on website

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Dental Care Professions

British Association of Dental Nurses

http://www.badn.org.uk/

There is a section on statutory registration that will be of interest to all dental nurses.

British Dental Hygienists' Association

http://www.bdha.org.uk/

There is a good patients' section covering such topics as gum disease, tooth decay and cessation of smoking. Members can access advice sheets on such topics as contracts of employment and remuneration guidelines. There is also a vacancies section.

British Dental Practice Managers Association

http://www.bdpma.org.uk/

This well-laid-out website has free access to articles and advice sheets on job description, recruitment, induction policy and specimen employment records.

Dental Resource Company

http://www.dental-resource.com/

The Dental Resource Company is based in Birmingham and their website offers workshops and online training (including BTEC courses) for dentists, receptionists, practice managers, care co-ordinators and dental nurses.

Hygienetown

http://www.docere.com/Hygienetown/SiteDefault.aspx

This website is an offshoot of Dentaltown, directed specifically at (mainly American) hygienists.

Tooth morphology quiz

http://www.dentistry.leeds.ac.uk/oroface/teeth/tstartr.html

This interactive online quiz, from the Leeds Dental Institute, would be a very useful revision resource for dental students, nurses and technicians.

Dental Study/Research

Cochrane Collaboration

http://www.cochrane.org/index.htm

The Cochrane Collaboration produces and disseminates systematic reviews of healthcare interventions and promotes the search for evidence in the form of clinical trials and other studies of interventions.

Centre for Evidence-based Dentistry

http://www.cebd.org/

The Centre for Evidence-based Dentistry (Fig. 8) is a key UK dental gateway. Linked to the Institute of Health Sciences in Oxford, it aims to promote the teaching, learning, practice and evaluation of evidence-based dentistry.

Figure 8
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The Centre for Evidence-based Dentistry website

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Evidentista

http://www.evidentista.org/

The Evidentista website has been developed by the Pan American Centers for Evidence Based Dentistry and a number of collaborators. It provides clear guidelines for learning about evidence-based dentistry and has a section on clinical questions and answers. The answers are a simple 'yes', 'no' or 'unknown'; this is followed by a brief summary of the main findings and a link to the abstract.

Faculty of General Dental Practice (UK)

http://www.fgdp.org.uk/research/downloads_html

There are some excellent resources that can be downloaded from this page. The free leaflets cover all aspects of research and audit in general dental practice.

Health on the Net Foundation

http://www.hon.ch/HONcode/Conduct.html

The principles of the HON code of conduct for health websites should be the first port of call for anyone who intends using the Internet for dental study or research.

Information Retrieval for Dental Professionals

http://www.dental.pitt.edu/informatics/ir/index.html

This online course (costing $75) is intended to increase your effectiveness and efficiency when searching for information on the Internet. The course comes from the University of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine, which has its own very active Department of Dental Informatics.

James Lind Library

http://www.jameslindlibrary.org/

Created by the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, the James Lind Library introduces the characteristics of fair tests of treatments in healthcare. It includes explanatory essays and over 100 records containing key passages to illustrate the evolution of fair tests over the centuries. The true value of hyperlinks soon becomes apparent as you read through the explanatory essays.

National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research

http://www.nidcr.nih.gov/

The National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research aims to improve oral health through research, research training and the dissemination of health information. There is a large amount of information on this American site. The health information section covers a wide range of dental topics for dentists and patients, while the science news in brief section highlights recent findings in the fields of oral microbiology and immunology.

Netting the Evidence

http://www.shef.ac.uk/scharr/ir/netting/

Netting the Evidence aims to facilitate evidence-based healthcare by providing support and access to helpful organisations and useful learning resources, such as evidence-based virtual libraries, software and journals.

Medicine Gateway of Intute: Health and Life Sciences

http://www.intute.ac.uk/healthandlifesciences/

The Medicine Gateway of Intute: Health and Life Sciences (formerly known as OMNI) is probably the most important medical gateway in the UK. It offers free access to a searchable catalogue of hand-selected and evaluated, quality Internet resources in health and medicine. There were over 240 resources listed when last carrying out a search of the site using the keyword 'dentistry'.

PubMed

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi

PubMed is a database service from the US National Library of Medicine that includes over 16 million citations and abstracts from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles dating back to the 1950s. PubMed includes links to many sites providing full text articles and other related resources.

The Medical Algorithms Project

http://www.medal.org/

This interesting site contains more than 8,000 medical algorithms, downloadable as spreadsheets. A medical algorithm is any computation, formula, survey, or look-up table useful in healthcare. The dental section contains over 100 algorithms, covering just about every dental speciality. Registration, which is free, is required to access all the algorithms.

Dental Link Sites

Dental Guide

http://www.dentalguide.co.uk/

This UK site has over one thousand links to dental websites, divided into categories such as dental practices, suppliers, laboratories, organisations, schools and universities. It also has an extensive classified adverts section.

Internet Dentistry Resources

http://www.spallek.com/IDR/

This site from the United States has many interesting dental links, although some of the links are now out of date.

Discussion Fora

GDP-UK

http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/GDP-UK/

This is the busiest free dental mailing list in the UK, with over 1,800 members and between 1,200 and 2,000 messages posted per month. Discussions cover clinical topics, questions about recommended materials/services and dental politics. A major dental supply company (The Dental Directory) currently sponsors the forum and they offer an extra discount to members of the group.

IDF

http://www.internetdentalforum.org/

Started in 1994, the Internet Dental Forum is the World's biggest dental mailing list, the purpose of which is 'to promote conversation regarding dentistry among those directly involved with patient care, be it a dentist, dental hygienist, dental technician, dental assistant, dental student, etc.' The main IDF group relates to clinical discussions, while its eleven subgroups cover topics such as dental labs, Cerec and the use of lasers in dentistry. Subscription costs $120 dollars per year but the first year is at a greatly reduced price of $19. The site now also has a link to DentalCast (http://www.dentalcast.net/), which is a free podcasting service providing sound and video clips on over 30 current dental topics.

Digital Dental Photography blog

http://www.thedigitaldentist-site.org.uk/

This website is run by Mike Sharland, who is the Head of Multimedia Services at Birmingham School of Dentistry. The revamped site uses a blog instead of the old forum as a means for discussing all aspects related to digital dental photography.

Patient Resources

3D Mouth

http://www.3dmouth.org/

Devised by the British Dental Association and supported by Wrigley Oral Healthcare in Action, the 3D Mouth website is aimed at children between the ages of 7 and 10 years of age and their teachers. It has a good selection of 3D animations.

American Dental Association

http://www.ada.org/

Apart from the A-Z professional topics, most of the professional content on this site is restricted to paid members of the ADA. However, it does have an excellent set of resources for dental patients. There is an extensive list of oral health topics, a glossary of dental terms, games, puzzles and an interactive story about a child visiting the dentist.

Animated Teeth

http://www.animated-teeth.com/index.htm

This American site has explanations and animations of common dental topics and procedures.

AskDental

http://www.askdental.com/

This site does not mention where it is based or who provides the service but it would seem to have links with the Simply Teeth website (see below). It offers an online dental consulting service for the general public where qualified dentists will answer patients' questions about any dental topic. It provides a second opinion for patients who are considering a course of dental treatment. Payment is $10 per consultation.

Association of Dental Implantology UK

http://www.adi.org.uk/public/implant/index.htm

Information for patients about implants can either be viewed as a series of web pages or be downloaded as two booklets. The Association has over 1,000 members and patients can search for a member's details either by name or retrieve a list of members close to their own postcode.

Best Treatments

http://www.besttreatments.co.uk/

This website has been created by a team at BMJ Publishing Group, with clinical input from 50 advisors. The website is divided into three sections: Conditions & Treatments, Decision Support and Operations & Tests. Common conditions of the mouth are covered and clicking on the Doctor's Version icon takes you to the BMJ Clinical Evidence website, which has been designed to help improve clinicians' decision making and improve patient care.

British Dental Association

http://www.bda.org/

The BDASmile section of the website (Fig. 9) can be found from the link on the top left-hand side of the BDA home page. This has clearly laid out advice for different age groups of patients. There is also the database of about 6,000 dentists in the find a dentist section. Patients can search for a dentist either by surname or postcode. BDA members can add or edit their practice details to this database online.

Figure 9
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The BDASmile homepage

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British Dental Health Foundation

http://www.dentalhealth.org.uk/

The Foundation has been around for 30 years, working to bring about improved standards of oral healthcare. Their website has a list of frequently asked questions, a section on oral cancer and a small number of fact sheets, puzzles and games for download. They offer free expert advice on an oral health problem by email or telephone and there is a link to their National Smile Week website.

Dentalwatch

http://www.dentalwatch.org/

This is a daughter site of Quackwatch, a non-profit corporation whose purpose is to combat health-related frauds, myths, fads and fallacies. The site is intended to help people make rational choices about dental care and covers such topics as fluoridation and the use of amalgam.

MouthPower Online

http://www.mouthpower.org/

Produced by the University of Maryland Baltimore, this interactive and fun site is designed for children to find out more about caring for their teeth (Fig. 10).

Figure 10
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One of the interactive sections of MouthPower Online

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NHS England Gateway

http://www.nhs.uk/

The NHS England Gateway acts as a portal to medical and dental resources for patients. There are clear links to NHS Direct, find a dentist, a health encyclopaedia, Best Treatments, and health policies and reports from the Department of Health. There are also links for the local NHS services in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Simple Steps to Better Dental Health

http://www.simplestepsdental.com

This well-laid-out site has comprehensive advice on dental prevention, dental conditions and their treatment. There are good illustrations, interactive tools and video clips. Content on the site is reviewed by the faculty of Columbia University College of Dental Medicine.

Simply Teeth

http://www.simplyteeth.com/

This quite extensive site explains the most common forms of dental treatment by using a simple question-and-answer format. All technical dental terms are highlighted and linked to a dictionary. Most of the contributors are academics from Boston University plus one GDP from the UK. The site has advertising via Google Ads and has prominent links to AskDental (see earlier patient resource).