In neurology, retrograde amnesia (RA) is a loss of memory-access to events that occurred or information that was learned in the past. It is caused by an injury or the onset of a disease. It tends to negatively affect episodic, autobiographical, and declarative memory, while keeping procedural memory intact without increasing difficulty for learning new information. RA can be temporally graded, or more permanent based on the severity of its cause. It is usually consistent with Ribots law. The law states that subjects are more likely to lose memories closer to the traumatic incident than more memories that happened further from the incident. The type of information that is forgotten can range from a specific memory, such as a single event, or a more general memory. This would resemble generic amnesia. Anterograde amnesia is a similar condition that deals with the inability to form new memories following the onset of an injury or disease. Cause
RA commonly results from damage to regions of the brain that are associated with episodic and declarative memory, including autobiographical information. In extreme cases, individuals may completely forget who they are. Generally, this is a more severe type of amnesia known as global, or generalized amnesia. However, memory loss can also be selective or categorical, manifested by a persons inability to remember events related to a specific incident or topic. Patients also differ in durations of RA (how long they cant recall information) and durations of what is forgotten (past time frame for which information is unavailable).
Oral and maxillofacial pathology refers to the diseases of the mouth ("oral cavity" or "stoma"), jaws ("maxillae" or "gnath") and related structures such as salivary glands, temporomandibular joints, facial muscles and perioral skin (the skin around the mouth). The mouth is an important organ with many different functions. It is also prone to a variety of medical and dental disorders.The specialty oral and maxillofacial pathology is concerned with diagnosis and study of the causes and effects of diseases affecting the oral and maxillofacial region. It is sometimes considered to be a specialty of dentistry and pathology. Sometimes the term head and neck pathology is used instead, which may indicate that the pathologist deals with otorhinolaryngologic disorders (i.e. ear, nose and throat) in addition to maxillofacial disorders. In this role there is some overlap between the expertise of head and neck pathologists and that of endocrine pathologists. Diagnosis
The key to any diagnosis is thorough medical, dental, social and psychological history as well as assessing certain lifestyle risk factors that may be involved in disease processes. This is followed by a thorough clinical investigation including extra-oral and intra-oral hard and soft tissues.It is sometimes the case that a diagnosis and treatment regime are possible to determine from history and examination, however it is good practice to compile a list of differential diagnoses.