Dental Info

 My son graduated from NYU College of Dentistry this June. I started teaching at the School shortly before he started 4 years ago. I had always wanted to resume my teaching activitie there ( I had taught briefly in the 1980's) and clearly this was a good time to start teaching again.  I asked if I could be assigned as a clinical instructor of dentistry in NYU's Department of Comprehensive Care and Cariology. As such I would be directly supervising third and fourth year students while they were in the clinics treating patients. I suspected I would be a good instructor and I could give something back both  to my community and to my profession.  I was able to help the students and their patients achieve better dental outcomes and I found that I benefited in other ways as well. I found that the challenges that I faced each week ended up further sharpening my clinical skills and accelerated opportunities for my own learning and definitely improved my clinical dexterity as well. Ea

Implant with broken crown part still attached  If your implant crown has a bite that has changed , its time to see your dentist right away. This often can mean that the screw holding in either the abutment or crown is coming loose. This should be addressed since leaving it for a later time can cause the implant screw to break, or even cause the implant to fail if due to due to a failure of the osseointegration that secures the implant to a patients jaw. No matter what the cause is, its best to notify your dentist and ask to come in for a visit as soon as they can schedule an appointment (hopefully with in the week).  broken screw retained implant crown Two weeks ago a patient called me up to let me know that her bite had changed with her implant crown and I saw her promptly. By the time she came in her screw retained crown had fractured and left part of the crown still attached below the gingiva. Fortunately the screw had not broken and I was able to remove the

 I find that it is helpful to leave several hours during my working week that are not to be scheduled with patients for me to treat. This allows me to tackle tasks that require thinking or may be time consuming, unpleasant or both.  I can't speak for other dentists, but some of these activities make me anxious or put me in a less than positive mood... Probably it is best not to treat patients when dealing with some issues.  Four years ago, I started teaching part time at NYU College of dentistry on my day off (Friday) and Thursday morning for three hours. Prior to working at NYU, I left open time on Fridays or Thursday mornings for non clerical activities. As much as I enjoy teaching , I don't like having limited time  to for my non clinical hours and was forced to deal with these activities between scheduled patient appointments. Two weeks ago I requested to limit my teaching hours to Fridays and I have resumed my old habit of scheduling time consuming clerical activiti