How To Care For Your New 3D Printed Dental Implant

Photo by Amir Seilsepour 3D Printed Dental Implants Congratulations, you have just had a 3D printed dental implant placed! If you are wondering how to take care of your new tooth, you are in the right place! 3D printing technology allows for a titanium dental implant, which is like the root of a tooth, to […]

Do I Really Need My Wisdom Teeth Removed?

Evaluating Wisdom Teeth As a surgeon, I am commonly asked by my patients and their families “Do I really need to have my wisdom teeth removed?” Everyone is hoping that my answer will be “No, of course not! Who gave you that crazy idea?!” If only it were so simple. How I decide whether you need […]

What Makes A Dental Implant Successful?

My new patient looked at me expectantly. “My best friend, who is a dentist, told me to come to you for my dental implant. My dentist said that she would pick you to place her implant, so here I am!” For my new patient, deciding who to have place her dental implant out of all […]

The Amazing Platelet

Did you know that you have a special cell within your blood that has amazing regenerative ability? It’s called a platelet and it has the ability to promote bone and soft tissue healing in the body. Platelets have hundreds of growth factors that encourage the body to produce new tissue. In the mouth, the ability […]

It Takes A Team

Since 2007, I have been voted by Portland Monthly Magazine as a Top Dentist in the specialty of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. The magazine sends out a survey to my peer group each year asking, “If you or your family member needed oral and maxillofacial surgery, who would you go to?”  Voting clinicians are asked […]

How Adversity Has Made Me A Better Surgeon

If you asked me what my favorite thing to do is, I would have to answer: “Operate!” Maybe that sounds weird to you, but I truly love what I do. I feel incredibly blessed to get to remove diseases that cause pain and suffering and put things right for my patients. It is deeply satisfying […]

Our Golden Rule

  It’s easy to imagine the discomfort of walking into a new healthcare provider’s office. You may have a referral. You may be walking in blindly, trusting you receive the proper care you think you need. You’re afraid because you don’t know what to expect. You’re apprehensive because it’s an unfamiliar environment. Perhaps you have […]

My Greatest Reward

July 7th  began like any other day for me. I remember that there was a beautiful sunrise that morning. I had a compressed, busy schedule in my oral and maxillofacial surgery practice in Lake Oswego. “We have a trauma patient coming in, Doctor” my front staff informed me when I arrived at my office. We […]

How to Minimize Pain After Oral Surgery

Will Oral Surgery Be Painful? “How bad is it going to hurt?” At only sixty pounds, and with big blue eyes, my little patient looked at me asking me a fundamental question that I have been asked many times before. Jack was only seven years old but he knew what he was most frightened of […]

What Firefighting Taught Me About Integrity

My Experience as a Firefighter Before I was a surgeon, I was a firefighter. I learned many things from my first profession, including how to change the oil on a fire engine! But one of the most important lessons that I still carry with me today and use daily as a surgeon concerns the relationship […]