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Abstract
Dental practice has expanded beyond its traditions of caring for teeth and gums. Today's dentists are trained to recognize and treat many different conditions of the head and neck. The increasing demand for individualized treatment continues to create expanding opportunities for pharmacists in the area of dental compounding. The majority of compounded formulations used by dentists are for direct application to the oral cavity, usually in the forms of mouthwashes, or oral pastes or powders. Endodontic procedures require a variety of solutions that can be compounded for professional office use only. Examples of all of these types of compounded preparations are provided.
After reviewing the literature on the history of dentistry, one might appreciate living in this century. In his second book, Hippocrates described a mouthwash to be used after each meal for cleansing the teeth and mouth. The recipe for what may well be the earliest mouth rinse in history called for crude but astonishingly effective ingredients. His recipe was extensive, and the contents ranged from abrasive ingredients (shells or small stones plus goat heads and whole bodies of mice [except intestines]) to honey, dill, and anise in white wine.1
Thanks to changes and innovations in science and technology, toothpastes, toothbrushes, and mouth rinses are now part of common hygiene habits, and dental treatment is accessible. Dentists of the modern age no longer specialize merely in the care of the teeth and the mouth. Rather, their scope of practice goes well beyond the diagnosis and management of diseased teeth and periodontium. Intraoral and extraoral conditions such as infectious processes, chronic mucosal vesiculoulcerative diseases, oral lesions, oral cancer, and a variety of pain syndromes, including temporomandibular joint dis ease and other neuralgias, are very common.2 The practice of the twenty-first century dentist comprises management of many different head and neck conditions. Besides all of the advances in dental therapeutics, it is almost impossible not to recognize the growth of cosmetic dentistry. Parallel with this expansion in dentistry has been the increased demand for specific, individual, personalized treatment. With an array of creative and modern pharmaceutical dosage forms, the compounding pharmacist has the expertise to prepare individualized medications for dental patients.
Generally, three main types of preparations are compounded in dentistry: (1) formulations...