We want to thank Dr. Dumont for taking the time to write his letter. We believe, however, that some, if not all, of Dr. Dumont’s comments are inaccurate. Dr. Dumont erroneously states several times in his letter that our article suggests and/or implies one thing or another without furnishing examples or direct statements from our article to support any of his contentions.
For example, in the second paragraph of his letter, Dr. Dumont states that we have manipulated 107 articles "to show that historical and contemporary orthodontics are essentially the same." First of all, the topic of our article was "centric relation" and not "orthodontics," per se. And certainly it would be wrong for anyone to believe that orthodontics, or even the issues involved in centric relation, have remained static over the last half-century.
Regarding our support for contemporary orthodontics, we discussed in a recent publication,1 among other topics, such cutting-edge issues as invisible aligners, maxillary molar distalizing appliances, temporary (orthodontic) anchorage devices (TOADs) also known as mini-implants, self-ligating brackets and maxillofacial distraction osteogenesis.
Decidedly, these orthodontic topics are contemporary and not historic. Specifically related to centric relation and condyle position (and, of course, the more global subject of occlusion/ temporomandibular disorder [TMD], we incontrovertibly demonstrated that the definition, etiology, diagnosis, classification and treatment of TMD have, without question, changed and evolved over the last century. Therefore, Dr. Dumont’s statement in his last paragraph that we implied in our article that "everything is fine just the way it has been" is fallacious.
Interestingly, the "bioesthetic" philosophy purports to provide diagnoses and treatments based on a particular optimal health model; however, bioesthetic dentistry is grounded in empiricism, and not science, and the framework for the gnathologic component of the philosophy dates back some 50 years. Curiously, though we have found the late Dr. Robert L. Lee’s writings interesting and meticulously done2–6 (particularly the chapters in the books edited by Lundeen and Gibbs2 and Rufenacht3), his study of minimally worn, healthy dentitions, which is the focus of the bioesthetic dentistry philosophy, was never published (to our knowledge) in a peer-reviewed journal.
Again, we thank Dr. Dumont for his interest in our article.
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