About zm Zahnärztliche Mitteilungen

zm Zahnärztliche Mitteilungen

The zm – Zahnärztliche Mitteilungen is the official journal of the German dental profession, published in Cologne since 1910. Issued fortnightly — 20 issues a year — by the Deutscher Ärzte-Verlag, it is the joint publication organ of the Bundeszahnärztekammer (German Dental Association) and the Kassenzahnärztliche Bundesvereinigung (National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Dentists). For more than 115 years it has carried the profession's official communications, health-policy debates, scientific reports and practice news to dentists across Germany. With its portal zm-online.de and a continuous publication record stretching from the German Empire to the present, the zm is both the profession's noticeboard and its historical memory.

Overview

Every organised profession needs an official voice, and for German dentists that voice is the zm. As the joint organ of the two national dental bodies — the Bundeszahnärztekammer (BZÄK), the professional association, and the Kassenzahnärztliche Bundesvereinigung (KZBV), the statutory-health-insurance dentists' association — the journal publishes the resolutions, statements and official notices that govern the profession, alongside the health-policy debates that affect it.

The readership is the entire German dental profession: practising dentists, their associations and chambers, policymakers, health insurers and the dental industry. The fortnightly rhythm — 20 issues a year — keeps the profession continuously informed between the major events of the dental calendar, from the German Dentists' Day (Deutscher Zahnärztetag) to the International Dental Show. Content spans official communications, health-policy analysis, scientific and clinical reports, practice management, legal questions such as fee-schedule commentary (GOZ/GOÄ), and news from Germany and the world.

Published by the Deutscher Ärzte-Verlag in Cologne, the zm appears in German with the ISSNs 0341-8995 and 0342-0264. Its longevity — continuous publication since 1910/11 — makes it one of the oldest medical professional journals in Germany.

The journal's institutional position is unusual in the German media landscape. Most professional journals are published by commercial publishers for a professional audience; the zm is published for the profession by the profession's own national bodies, with a commercial medical publisher as its producer. That structure gives it a dual character: it is simultaneously a trade journal competing for readers' attention and an official gazette whose communications carry institutional weight. For the practising dentist, the zm is where the profession's leadership explains its decisions — on fee schedules, on prevention policy, on the organisation of care — and where the individual practitioner finds the practical consequences for the daily work of the practice.

History

The Zahnärztliche Mitteilungen began in 1910/11 as the organ of the organised German dental profession — initially, as the journal database records, the organ of the Bundesverband der Deutschen Zahnärzte and the Kassenärztliche Bundesvereinigung, published by the Deutscher Ärzte-Verlag with changing places of publication in the early years. Through the Weimar Republic, the Nazi era, war and division, the journal accompanied the profession; its early issuers included the economic association of German dentists, the association of German dental professional representations, and the dental chambers of the Länder from Bavaria to Württemberg-Hohenzollern.

After 1945 the zm became the joint publication of the reconstituted national bodies: the Bundeszahnärztekammer — the working association of the German dental chambers — and the Kassenzahnärztliche Bundesvereinigung, the corporation under public law representing contract dentists. Published in Cologne by the Deutscher Ärzte-Verlag (Postfach 40 02 65, 50832 Köln; editorial offices at Universitätsstraße 71–73, 50931 Köln), it settled into its fortnightly rhythm of 20 issues a year.

The journal's pages document more than a century of dental history: the professionalisation of dentistry, the development of the statutory health-insurance system, the fee-schedule battles, the scientific advances from amalgam to implants to digital workflows, and the profession's engagement with public health — from early-childhood caries prevention campaigns with midwives' associations to development cooperation. Issue numbering tells the story of continuity: volume 100 in 2010, volume 103 in 2013, volume 107 in 2017, issue 18/2025 in September 2025.

Individual issues illustrate the breadth. The September 2013 edition reported on the cooperation between the BZÄK and the German Midwives' Association (DHV) against early-childhood caries — "too many small children already have badly decayed teeth", affecting all social strata but especially vulnerable families — with midwives distributing dental check-up passports and a comic as an instrument of nationwide midwifery work. The June 2014 issue carried practice-valuation expertise, explaining the modified earnings-value method endorsed by supreme-court case law for valuing dental practices on sale or purchase. The August 2017 double issue combined the German Dentists' Day interview with diagnostics, new commentaries on the GOZ and GOÄ fee schedules, and clinical topics from hypnosis in the practice to implant aesthetics. Each fortnight, the zm thus assembles the profession's agenda in miniature.

Content and Sections

Each fortnightly issue combines the official, the political, the scientific and the practical. Official communications from the BZÄK and KZBV — resolutions, statements, election notices — give the journal its institutional character. Health-policy coverage analyses the decisions from Berlin and Brussels affecting dental care: fee schedules, prevention policy, the organisation of the health professions, and the European mobility of doctors and carers.

Scientific and clinical reports present current research and practice topics — from 3D-printed biodegradable bone grafts for cleft defects to hypnosis in the practice — while practice sections address the business of dentistry: practice valuation using the modified earnings-value method, practice-management software, and the economics of practice foundation. Legal commentary explains the fee schedules (GOZ/GOÄ) and court decisions. The "Gesellschaft" and "Deutschland und die Welt" sections broaden the view to social issues and international affairs, including the federal government's development cooperation.

Advertising from the dental industry — implants, anaesthesia reversal, practice software — reflects the journal's reach into every German dental practice. The tone is professional and institutional: the zm speaks as the profession speaking to itself. The "PRAXIS" advertising pages, with their direct appeals to practice founders ("Lust auf einen starken Umsatztreiber mit Jagdinstinkt?"), show the commercial side of the journal's ecosystem: practice-management software, financing and equipment suppliers addressing the dentist as investor in the fortnightly rhythm the profession has read for generations.

Publisher and Organization

The zm – Zahnärztliche Mitteilungen is published by the Deutscher Ärzte-Verlag GmbH, Cologne (Postfach 40 02 65, 50832 Köln), on behalf of its editors: the Bundeszahnärztekammer – Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Deutschen Zahnärztekammern e.V. and the Kassenzahnärztliche Bundesvereinigung K.d.ö.R. It appears fortnightly — 20 issues a year — in German, with the ISSNs 0341-8995 and 0342-0264 (ZDB-ID 2259724-4). The journal's online portal is zm-online.de. The Deutscher Ärzte-Verlag, one of Germany's leading medical publishers, also produces dental scientific journals — including the Deutsche Zahn-, Mund- und Kieferheilkunde, the Zeitschrift für Zahnärztliche Implantologie and Oralprophylaxe und Kinderzahnheilkunde — making Cologne a publishing centre of German dentistry's print media. Individual editors-in-chief and circulation figures for the zm have not been publicly confirmed in the sources available for this profile.

Digital Presence

The journal's digital home is zm-online.de, the portal carrying the zm's current content, archives and the profession's news between the fortnightly print issues. The site extends the print journal's institutional role into the digital space, making official communications and policy coverage continuously available. The BZÄK's press pages complement the portal with downloadable documents, such as the cooperation materials on early-childhood caries prevention. Through its combination of a 115-year print tradition and its online portal, the zm remains the central medium of the German dental profession — the fortnightly record of what dentistry's national bodies decide, debate and recommend, now readable wherever the profession works.