Interpreting the medical history.

Oral health care for the medically compromised patient requires that the practitioner possess an ability to appropriately gather and critically analyze a patient's medical history. This paper will provide the reader with an introduction to medical history collection and analysis. The various major systems will be presented in a manner that will simplify the assessment of a patient's history. A simplified method for dental treatment planning using a dental risk assessment and prognosis evaluation scale called PARS (Prognosis and Assessment of Risk Scale) will be presented.