Cohen’s Pathways of The Pulp 11th Edition – Kenneth M. Hargreaves, Louis H. Berman

Cohen’s Pathways of The Pulp eleventh Edition

The Editors have had the privilege of “standing on the shoulders” of our generous contributors, enabling us to “look over the horizon” to gain a glimpse at our endodontic future.
As we advance into the years ahead, we will incorporate even more refined and accurate improvements in pulpal diagnosis, canal cleaning and disinfection, canal obturation, and surgical enhancements.
In looking more clearly toward our impending endeavors, it becomes important to scrutinize the deficiencies of our past and present. Over the past several decades we have gone from arsenic to sodium hypochlorite, from bird droppings to gutta percha, from hand files to motor- driven files, from culturing to onevisit appointments, from two-dimensional to three-dimensional radiography, and from pulp removal to pulpal regeneration.
And still, the clinical and academic controversies are pervasive.
So, where will the future of our specialty take us? With patients living longer and with the inescapable comparison of endodontics to endosseous implants, the demand for endodontic excellence has greatly increased. To that end, we suspect that future evidence-based approaches will continue to question the longevity of successful implant retention, intensifying the need for more predictable endodontic outcomes.
Surprisingly, we still base our diagnosis on a presumed and almost subjective pulpal status. Imagine a future in which endodontic diagnosis could be more objective by noninvasively scanning the pulp tissue. Imagine algorithms built into all digital radiography for interpreting and extrapolating disease processes.