Extraordinary Letters to the Editor

The recent decision by the Faculty of Dental Surgery of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh is a classic example of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Already in 1976, with the old DOrth still in place, a number of my colleagues had realized the value of presenting full records of personally treated cases to each other for discussion and established a Treatment Study Group within the BSSO to promote this idea.¹ The Group's subsequent table demonstrations at the British Orthodontic Conference, and its members' publications over the next 5 years, were instrumental in convincing our colleagues of the need to incorporate this component into a future UK specialist examination.^2,3,4 When in 1994, Britain was forced to comply with the European Directives on Specialist Training in Dentistry, the ‘accord’ established between the Colleges, the Universities and the GDC, negotiated by Dame Margaret Seward, resulted in an agreed MOrthRCS (Edin and Eng)/MDO RCPS qualification being brought into being. Since then, our UK specialist qualifications, overseen by the Specialist Advisory Committee (SAC) in Orthodontics and meeting European standards,⁵ have gained international respect.