The current, optimistic prognosis is that newborns will reach an average age of 100 years. This increased life-expectancy requires a renewed vision of long-term goals for oral health. The starting-point could be a prospective end-point with minimal oral function which should be reached, for example, in the last years of one’s life. The consequence is that adequate oral healthcare for the elderly starts in childhood. Choices such as the extraction of premolars for orthodontic reasons and the dental re-restoration cycle have a great negative impact on reaching this goal. The average sustainability of dental restorations or prosthetic constructions is commonly much shorter than the life-expectancy of a patient. If oral treatment is necessary, it is recommended to give priority to maintaining a minimally functional dentition up to an advanced age, instead of focusing on short- or medium-term goals.

A general dental practitioner can, in the daily practice, be confronted with a patient with a swelling in the head and neck region. For such swellings an extensive differential diagnosis exists. Often such a swelling is caused by one or more enlarged lymph nodes due to a bacterial or viral infection. If a swelling in the head and neck region has been present for some time – longer than 4 weeks – then there is a considerable chance, especially in adults, that it is the result of the metastasizing of a malignancy, such as a squamous cell carcinoma in the oral mucosa or another mucosal site in the head and neck region. In addition to lymph node swellings resulting from a malignancy, diseases are now more frequently encountered which were previously uncommon in the Netherlands, due in part to the growing number of people with a non-Western ethnic background. Tuberculosis is such a rare disease, which can in the first instance express itself in the form of a lymph node swelling in the head and neck region.

Lymangiomas are congenital malformations of the lymphatic system. They can appear at any age and in any part of the body. In the head and neck area lymangiomas can give rise to functional as well as esthetic problems. Therapy consist of sclerosis, possibly followed by surgical excision. Stereophotogrammetry is a relatively new technique which, by means of superimposition of pre- and postoperative images, provides the possibility to quantify treatment results. In this paper 3 patients who underwent treatment of a lymphatic malformation and in whom treatment results were measured with stereophotogrammetry are discussed. The conclusion can be drawn that stereophotogrammetry is a promising technique for evaluation of treatment results of superficially localised lymphatic malformations that displace the skin in the head and neck area.

The consumption of acidic beverages may cause dental erosion. The consumption of such beverages during school hours may contribute to the development of erosion. In order to study the extent to which children of secondary schools are exposed to potentially erosive beverages, 43 locations in 37 schools in the Netherlands were visited. In each school, all available types of beverages were registered and classified as non- erosive or potentially erosive. In addition, the number of students, type of school, opening times of the canteens and the number of vending machines were recorded. It was revealed that a wide variety of beverages is available in school canteens, of which a large number are potentially erosive (71.8 ± 12.9%). The number of different products available, the number of different beverages available and the number of potentially erosive drinks all correlated with the number of students per school, but not with the type of education. The number of drinks available and the number of potentially erosive drinks correlated with the opening hours of the canteens and the number of vending machines.

In 1986, oral microbiology, and especially the microbiology of periodontal infections, was of central importance. Interest in periodontology was growing rapidly and with it, interest in developments in microbiology and the immunology of infectious diseases of the periodontium. At national and international meetings discussions took place concerning the role of the newly discovered bacterial species Actinobacillus actinomycetemcomitans and the role of antibiotics in the treatment of severe periodontitis. Since the 1980s, much has changed in periodontology, not least of all as a result ofa new specialism: oral implantology. With it, a new disease also came into existence: peri-implantitis.