On 8th June at The Campbell Academy in Nottingham we hosted one of our Master Class events combined with an ITI Study Club in the evening.
These events are actually becoming quite famous I think (only to a very few people - perhaps the best way)
We have an opportunity through the ITI to invite some incredible speakers who are genuinely world class to our little local Nottingham venue at The Riverbank and every time they seem to come the sun seems to shine.
It was no exception on 8th June as we kicked off at 10am with the weather fantastic outside and thank goodness for the air con at The Riverbank! There were 15 clinicians present to see Thomas von Arx do a 6 hour Master Class (including breaks) called 'Oral Worlds'. This was an anatomical journey through all the significant anatomical regions of the upper and lower jaw which sounds old hat and like something everybody has done before. This is a little bit different though.
Thomas has spent 6 months doing a sabbatical at the University of Hawaii which has no dental school but a world famous anatomy department. The way that they process anatomical specimens, the way they use dye to identify different anatomical structures, the way they dissect and the way they present things is truly exceptional. For 6 months Thomas von Arx investigated and re-investigated functional surgical anatomy and wrote a book about it which will be published later in the year. The book takes all the areas of significant surgical oral anatomy for oral surgeons in other disciplines and breaks them down into their anatomical components, their histological components and their surgically relevant components. It's a truly exceptional thing which changed everybody's practice that day and everybody that was there agrees on that.
For my own part the description and discussions about how to anaesthetise and remove lower third molars based on new findings in anatomy, new findings in CBCT and the incidence and positions of third molars was eye opening and astonishing. This is a surprise to somebody who has extracted something like 3000 impacted lower third molars and carried out 10,000 surgical extractions. I felt like I was re-learning my craft all over again.
Discussions about the incisive foramen during implant surgery and what we should or shouldn't do, discussions about innovation or blood supply to the maxillary sinus for sinus grafts, discussion about the inferior dental canal and it's pathways, how many nerves actually exist within the canal and how many nerves exist from the mental foramens, discussion about anterior loops - all of these things were practice changers and game changers. To be able to go back and functionally use anatomy again.
In the evening Thomas moved along to the ITI Study Club to provide a truly stunning 90 minute lecture on trauma in relation to implant dentistry. The feedback for that was astonishing and everybody in the audience (as far as I know) was taken aback by the quality of the treatment for trauma at the University of Bern. The dental school has a 24 hour, 7 day on call trauma service to provide the optimum level of care. As a result of this their experience in trauma is astonishing but their protocols for the treatment of treatment and of post-trauma cases is amazing and puts the UK's strategy for dental trauma to absolute shame. The long-term problems associated with this for patients is massive and if we get it early and treat it early the outcomes can be dramatic. It made me and many people there wish we were a lot better than we are.
It's interesting when we put on these Master Classes with guys like this coming across that we don't get 100, 200 or 300 people wanting to come but they wouldn't work unless they were in a small group.
I would be tempted to run that again but I just don't know if anybody would come apart from the committed people that were there on that day.
A footnote to this is that the guy who came to present, who suffers from spasmodic dysphonia (a condition of the larynx which makes it difficult to speak and he tires throughout the day therefore has to wear a head mic at all times, is 60 years old. He is a 60 year old who has just finished a 6 month sabbatical in Hawaii and has written a book which he says "will not make much money but will be a great gift to the profession". How many other guys do you know like that? How many other guys have you met like that?
Total inspiration.
Blog Post Number: 976
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