Specialist Dental Group has launched an on-going series of blog posts by our individual dental specialists. All views provided are the dentist’s own opinions and are posted on this blog as part of our on-going efforts to educate the public about dental issues and other matters of interest relating to dentistry and healthcare.
I was in Hong Kong in July to celebrate my dental school reunion. It is hard to believe that it has been 20 years since I graduated from dental school. It was a sizeable gathering of old classmates and their families. After all, it was a meeting of people with whom we had spent five solid years together during our early adulthood.
We exchanged class notes in those days, and I can still remember clearly how we strived to thrive and survive in that intensive education environment. In contrast, when we see each other nowadays, we exchange notes, trying to see how each other has fared in the journey of life. Some of us have taken the specialist route and have become an expert in our chosen fields, some of us left our home town and settled elsewhere in the name of work and/or love.
One thing that did not change was that we all became 20-year-old kids again when we had our get together. We reverted to our original common ground – travelers in a life-long professional journey.
It is also true that many of us found that what we are practising clinically nowadays is quite different from what we were taught in dental school. While fundamental principles are still the anchor, it seems that disease patterns, treatment modalities and predictability of treatment outcomes have changed dramatically over the last two decades!
Dental science has advanced leaps and bounds with time and dentistry is arguably one of the disciplines of health science that has seen the most meaningful changes. In the past, people associated pain with dentistry, nowadays it is fair to say that dentistry is no longer painful but rather dentists are there to resolve one’s dental problems.
Dr. Ansgar C. Cheng is a Dental Specialist in Prosthodontics (Teeth Replacement) with Specialist Dental Group™. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor with the National University of Singapore. He has a special interest in dental implants, cosmetic dentistry and treatment of medically compromised patients, including cancer patients. For more information about Dr. Cheng, click here
