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The GDC ruined my ability to develop as a practitioner to the level at which I would like to.

In previous blogs recently, I’ve talked about the Rob Oretti Masterclass and watching him provide work on an extraordinary level which has a higher level of going wrong than that of straight forward and simple cases.

The Monday following that Masterclass (which I unfortunately couldn’t attend half of) I was providing an open sinus graft procedure for a patient in the practice.

During that procedure the patient’s sinus membrane tour, as the membrane was heavily tethered to a previous extraction site. It made the procedure considerably more challenging than it otherwise would have been.

The tear occurred at about 8:30 on a Monday morning, I had been working with the patient for an hour already. Becky was nursing for me and one of my mentees who had referred the patient was watching all of this unfold.

During the procedure I had to figure out how to work around what was a very difficult surgical situation and manipulate the membrane entirely around the tear, enlarging the window and working back on itself to fold the tear upon itself to then line the area with a collagen membrane before I could continue with the procedure (to stop the procedure there may have been to condemn the patient to no further implant treatment).

80% of my mind was on the job and 20% was on my GDC case, which was another torn sinus membrane years ago.

The fear of repercussion still exists, and gives me a sick feeling in my stomach when I think about it, particularly when I find myself in clinical situations that are challenging.

I’m not sure how this patient will turn out, but if the majority of my 400 previous sinus grafts, and the majority of my previous 100 sinus graft tears are concerned, it will heal beautifully with a great long-term prognosis.

It doesn’t detract from the fact though that my urge and my ability to push myself surgically to benefit more patients in the long term has been restricted and damaged by the experience in my GDC case.

As time passes, so that diminishes, but we’re now heading towards 5 years after I treated the patient; that’s a big chunk out of my career.

The guys taking up implant dentistry nowadays in our teaching system have no chance whatsoever of reaching the heights of Rob Oretti because they’re all too scared, and if they’re not too scared they will try things, and if they try things some things will go wrong and they will get got!

It really is time we had an open discussion about defensive dentistry in some sort of large and consequence free conference involving the indemnity societies, the GDC and the profession.

Probably much more important that we have it in medicine than dentistry but dentistry would be a good place to start.

Blog post number - 2137