Preface

Craniofacial and orodental health are essential components of good overall health and wellbeing. The goal of the medical and dental professions with all their interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary subspecialties is to help the population achieve a stable and healthy head and neck and cranio-maxillofacial complex. Hence, identifying challenges and opportunities is integral, especially considering the increasing ageing population and demand for orodental health care, products, services, and alternative solutions. It is noteworthy that this agrees with and supports the global 2020 vision of the Fédération Dentaire Internationale (FDI) World Dental Federation, the world's leading dental professional organization on oral and dental health. The FDI proposes and urges expansion of the role of existing oral and dental healthcare professionals and fosters fundamental research and translational technologies to better mitigate the impacts of socioeconomic dynamics. In this context, this book focuses on the role of biomechanics and functional tissue engineering.

In brief, innovative engineering solutions that incorporate advanced biomaterials, nanobiotechnology, three-dimensional printing, computer assistance, and robotic systems offer huge potential for augmenting and improving the functional and esthetic cranio-maxillofacial and orodental health profile of patients. A good example, perhaps, is nanodentistry and salivary gland radioprotection in patients with head and neck cancer. Nanodentistry is clearly multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary, building on existing knowledge and accruing expertise in different scientific and technological fields, seeking persistent refinement of traditional approaches, via the development and/or incorporation of advanced biomaterials, new bio-functional tools, and pharmacological formulations to improve overall orodental practice and care. While slowly evolving, such advances are expected to provide dentists and surgeons with more precision-made and tailored functional materials, drugs, and equipment, by which safety, esthetics, biomechanics, function/ efficacy, and patient compliance are enhanced. Due to the complex nature of such "outside-the-box" (or even "no-box") healthcare-related bio-engineering problem– solution technologies, they have attracted experts from physics, chemistry, biology, materials science, pharmaceutics, robotics, and bioengineering. The goal is to improve overall healthcare and wellbeing with a positive impact on socioeconomics and quality of life.

This book is a collection of original and state-of-the-art works in orodental and cranio-maxillofacial healthcare and related topics. It presents the latest ideas, concepts, findings, achievements, and future projections as well as promotes awareness of the rapidly evolving and enabling multidisciplinary technology, thereby encouraging a fruitful dialogue to bridge the gap between engineering, medicine, and dentistry (including cell biology and biomechanics subspecialties, extending to the head and neck) for research and innovation collaboration across the fields to address critical and urgent biodental/biomedical concerns. The volume contains eleven original contributions presenting recent advances in biomechanical properties of stem cells, periodontal and bone tissues, and polymer/metal-based biomaterials as pharmaceutical delivery systems and bioimaging agents, as well as stimulating mathematical

modeling methods as fundamental and expedited analytical tools, for clinical use. Different areas of engineering solutions, once more, clearly support the previously mentioned growing need and we hope to bridge the disciplinary communication and collaboration gap through this contribution. Finally, while we believe that this book will be useful and inspiring for scientists, researchers, engineers, and clinical practitioners involved in healthcare engineering solutions, it is recommended to pay special attention to the potentially impactful role of applied and functional bio-dental tissue engineering, drug/gene delivery (controlled and metered systems) and cell therapy, bioscaffolds, image-guided and -assisted surgery, nanodentistry and biomechanics towards developing better solutions for problems/conditions of the orodental and cranio-maxillofacial complex.
