By the time you read this, you should be able to find a book I’ve participated in writing and publishing. In fact, maybe I’m the only dentist in Jefferson City who’s on the cover of a book about dentistry for consumers. My contribution was about one of my professional passions, dental implant solutions. It’s been a learning experience, and may not be the last of my involvement in such a thing.

Two years ago, I was at a meeting in Colorado with several friends who happen to be dentists from around the Midwest and Rocky Mountain states. Our recurring meetings were where we put our heads together, searched for and shared ideas to help us do a better job for you, our clients. People may not like coming to the dentist, but for some crazy reason or another a lot of you do come, and I’d hate to ever take that for granted. So I try to work on leading my team to improve the experience we provide to you. I hope at least some of the time our efforts make a difference for you.

One of my dental friends proposed that we collaborate in producing a book we could share with people who want to improve the quality of their lives by enjoying a healthy, strong, confident smile. It’s something we believe in because of how great it feels for us when we can produce a life-changing result for someone who’s suffered poor health and self-confidence because of the poor condition of their mouth.

Not all of my friends were able to participate in writing the book, and some who thought they would found it was more difficult to accomplish than they’d expected. Like any collective effort, it required a lot of coordination and patience to get each participant’s contribution. Most of my part of the book was written soon after we began the project, but the editing process went on for many months afterwards. After many months without any apparent progress, I began to wonder if our book would really be completed and published.

I was chosen to write a chapter on dental implants, while my other friends wrote about things like helping people with dental anxiety, helping diagnose the causes of and restore the damage caused by destructive bite habits, using high-tech solutions such as dental lasers and computer-aided design and machining (CAD/CAM) to treat dental conditions, and even a bit of soul-searching about what draws a person into the dental career field in the first place.

Dental implants are such a rapidly expanding mode of oral treatment worldwide, it’s likely that you or someone you know has either already considered or had one placed in their mouths. They provide satisfying solutions to many of the most challenging and vexing conditions patients and dentists encounter. My training in placing and restoring dental implants began in 1997, while in a two-year dental residency in San Antonio, Texas.

Since then, I’ve attended hundreds of hours of additional training in implant dentistry. At Stadium Dental Center we place and restore damaged smiles with conventional and “mini implants.” From the “All On Four” advanced solution for replacing an entire arch of missing teeth to the natural looking and feeling replacement of individual missing teeth, dental implants have been an exciting alternative to offer many of our clients. I’ll post more on the topic in this blog soon.