The Index to Dental Literature is generated from the MEDLARS data tapes. The dental file, a subset of MEDLARs, is available for online searching. One of the major problems encountered when searching for dental literature in the predominately medical file is the specificity of the dental vocabulary. Six suggestions are given to help the user find the closest MeSH equivalent for the dental concept. Examples are provided to illustrate retrospective searching of the BACKfiles and the uses of journal titles lists, dental terms, subheadings, Text Words, and pre-explosions when searching MEDLINE for dental and related literature.