The International Scene

Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery exists as a surgical speciality in most countries of the world. The speciality in the United Kingdom is structured and defined in harmony with other countries in the EEC to ensure that accredited specialists have the right to practice in other member states.

European Law highlights the difference between Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery and the other surgical specialities, a difference based on its unique association with dentistry. Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery (surgery of the mouth, jaws and face) is therefore defined under the Medical Directives as a speciality requiring both medical and dental qualification.

However, surgery of the mouth (oral surgery) has always been part of dentistry and remains defined as a dental speciality in the separate Dental Directives.

The British Association of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeons is affiliated to the International Association of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeons (IAOMS) along with 57 other nations. The IAOMS is a broad church, as it represents countries with widely differing levels of industrial development and medical specialist training. 15% of the world population controls 90% of its wealth. In these countries Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery is fully developed as a major surgical speciality, based on dentistry, linked to supervised advanced surgical training.

However, the major health care needs in orofacial disease are in the emerging and least developed industrial nations. It is here that oral cancer and cleft lip and palate are most prevalent, where major jaw infections are most common and where local armed conflict leads to facial injury and deformity at its most extreme.

The objective of the International Association is to foster the development of the speciality world-wide, to recruit and fund teachers for the developing world and to facilitate international exchanges of trainees.

The British Association has always played a leading part in international speciality affairs and has recently contributed generously to the newly-formed International Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery Foundation. This Foundation is the independent brainchild of IAOMS and will seek to attract sufficient funds to further the ambitious educational policies of the speciality world-wide.

A very successful joint meeting of BAOMS and our sister American Association the AAOMS was held in Boston in September 1999 and in previous years joint meetings have been held with the Associations in Scandinavia and South Africa