Research During Residency for Oral Surgeons?

Earlier this year over the summer an article appeared in the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery discussing the attitudes of program directors and residents toward performing research during residency. I commented on this article here http://blog.teethremoval.com/the-lack-of-importance-of-research-in-oral-and-maxillofacial-surgery-residency-programs/ A new article has appeared in the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery written by Dr. James R. Hupp titled Research During Residency – Should it be Mandated? (vol. 69, pages 2685-2687, 2011). In the article is a discussion of research and whether or not it should be performed by oral surgeons in residency. Dr. Hupp discuses his own experience with research work and then questions if the current accreditation standards require all Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery residents to do research. He says: “Now the question becomes, should our standards require all residents to have the opportunity to conduct research and, in my … Read more

Why People Hate the Dentist

Numerous posts on the internet have attempted to shed light on the why people hate the dentist. Tom over at OralAnswers.com has a two part series on why people hate the dentists located at http://www.oralanswers.com/2011/09/why-people-hate-the-dentist/ and http://www.oralanswers.com/2011/09/why-people-hate-the-dentist-my-theory-part-ii/ Dr. Joe Bulger DDS in Canada changed the name of his blog to hatedentists.com and his written several posts on the topic of people who hate dentists located at http://www.hatedentists.com/1319/hate-dentist/ , http://www.hatedentists.com/1326/dentist-haters/ , and http://www.hatedentists.com/1363/top-10-reasons-people-hate-dentists/ SaneDentist.com has a post by Dr. Mujtaba Ali regarding 5 reasons why people hate the dentist located at http://www.sanedentist.com/here-are-5-reasons-why-we-hate-the-dentist-and-what-a-dentist-thinks-about-them.html Reading, over these posts and potential explanations for hate towards the dentist just doesn’t seem to do the hate justice and doesn’t touch on all the issues. So here are some reasons why I think people really hate dentists (subjective opinion): 1) Being motivated by money to the point … Read more

The American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons Fails to Use Basic Statistics in Research on Wisdom Teeth

I have previously reported how the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (AAOMS) recently had a press conference on wisdom teeth in Washington, D.C. See http://blog.teethremoval.com/third-molar-multidisciplinary-press-conference/ for more information. Shortly after the press conference they issued a press release available at http://www.aaoms.org/docs/media/third_molars/press_release.pdf which is titled “Conventional Wisdom about Wisdom teeth Confirmed: Evidence Shows Keeping Wisdom teeth May be More Harmful than Previously Thought.” One of the additional key findings listed in this press release  is “Most patients (60 percent) with asymptomatic wisdom teeth prefer extraction to retention.” This finding comes from a recent article in the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, titled “Most Patients With Asymptomatic, Disease-Free Third Molars Elect Extraction Over Retention as Their Their Preferred Treatment.”  The article is by Brian E. Kinard, BS and Thomas B. Dodson, DMD, MPH.  It appears in the December 2010 … Read more

Oral Surgeon Websites: Similar Content

I wanted to alert everyone to a new article I just wrote and updated on my website http://www.teethremoval.com/oral_surgery_websites_similar_content_similar_sites.html. It talks about how oral surgeons are using PBHS Inc. to design them websites. However, PBHS Inc. uses a template for the websites so the content for all of the websites designed is very similar. This means the information on procedures and even after care procedures for a large number of oral surgeon and oral surgeon group’s websites are nearly exactly the same if not identical. This is quite alarming to me and you should be aware of this if you are considering wisdom teeth removal surgery. The likely explanation is that oral surgeons are not skilled in website design and are not taking the time to modify the content provided by PBHS Inc. Even so, PBHS Inc. has a very large … Read more