Contemporary technological achievements and the easy availability of complex diagnostic tests may cause us to forget that the foundation and starting point of diagnosis, treatment, and patient monitoring is a quality medical history and thorough clinical examination. In everyday practice, these skills are the most important tools and are rightly referred to as the "art of medicine".

The editors and collaborators, due to the range of issues covered by the textbook, were faced with difficult task of choosing the area and presentation scope that will satisfy users, offering a sufficient amount of recent information useful in everyday practice. Its primary purpose has encouraged some authors to extend their chapters to include issues that are especially important to dental medicine practitioners. Therefore, we thank everyone for their efforts.

Due to the comprehensiveness of the presented information that is valuable in practice, this textbook will be useful for the wider population, students of medicine and other biomedical studies held in English, and all other experts involved in the process of prevention and treatment of children and adolescents whose native language is not Croatian.