A few weeks ago I was contacted by an implant legend in the United Kingdom.
Dr Jack Richardson of Birmingham was one of the first proper Straumann users in the United Kingdom in the mid-1980’s.
Jack was a championship skier, ski instructor and ski guide. He speaks fluent German and was one of the first earlier doctors to take the plunge in implant dentistry in the UK getting to know and becoming friendly with the Straumann company at that time having had placed subperiosteal and blade implants prior to this. Incidentally Jack placed multiple blade implants and has seen a very low failure rate with these - many of which he continues to see on review today.
Jack was asking for help, many of his GDP’s who referred to him have retired or died (he is 72 and still working full time) and he was asking how we had managed to build our practice up over recent years whilst his was declining. I jumped at the chance to help someone who has shaped my career so dramatically.
Before I provided dental implant treatment myself I had experienced some of it in the early to mid 1990’s in maxillofacial surgery. When I first went into practice as a VDP I went to an implant evening provided by Straumann at a car showroom in Nottingham and won a raffle prize of a Straumann surgical restorative course in Cambridge in 1998. The presenter that night was Jack Richardson.
Following that and for 2 - 3 years I placed implants quite regularly within my practice and was asked to begin to teach for Straumann. At this point they were looking for someone to teach in tandem with Jack Richardson but he hadn’t found anyone who he felt he could work appropriately with and I was invited over for dinner in Birmingham with the great Jack Richardson to see if we could get along. We hit things off majestically - had a wonderful meal and a tour around his practice and then taught on many occasions and became vast friends. Jack is 32 years older than me, has a vast array of experience and has provided amongst other things, hundreds of full arch reconstructions on dental implants. This experience is absolutely vital and crucial and should not be lost at our profession but inevitably as people grow older they begin to cast aside for young upstarts who are up and coming and think they know how things work better. Jack knows what works and what doesn’t, he has done it and seen it. He knows what looks good after 10 - 15 years and has stayed in the same place.
How many times will we lose people like this who have masses to offer to the younger generation from the lack of respect for experience and age.
It was a pleasure to see Jack and to help in anyway I could (I’m not sure that I did and I think I gained more from Jack that meeting than he did from me)
We sat and had dinner in one of my favourite Italian restaurants and I marveled at the experience of someone who had been placing dental implants since around about the time of Live Aid.
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