Hi, I am currently an intern at Dr. Dorfman’s Center for Special Dentistry and I also wanted to add a few insights:

The intention is to offer patients extremely high-end dental care because he actually cares about it. All dentists & specialists in the office are encouraged to take as long as they need to perform dentistry as well as possible. Patients leave happy, well informed and with a new friend; he really cares about the patients and their dentistry.

You cannot work for what you don’t know exists. I never even considered that a world outside of insurance dentistry exists before I came to the office. It’s a hard thing to achieve, and you have to work really hard to make it work, but it opens up your options as a dentist. At the same time, Dr. Dorfman has been a pro bono professor at both Columbia and NYU dental schools for nearly 20 combined years; for over 12 years dental students were legally allowed to treat charity dental cases in the office for extremely low fees. A high school internship also exists in the office to mentor inner city kids.

I have learned a ton of dentistry and have made some potentially life long friends. I really recommend this program!

– P.C.

This article was written in the Wall Street Journal after I discovered a problem with Google’s Session-based Broad Match.

Read The Wall Street Journal article.

I was a full time intern with Dr. Jeff Dorfman for about a year, and perhaps can offer some insight from personal experience. I have met many interns who stayed for two or three years, so they must also be learning a lot. The Center for Special Dentistry is a unique place that has offered dental internships for 25 years. I don’t know of any other place like it where college students with no experience can be allowed to watch and learn how to treat some of the most complicated cases in dentistry. I’ve been exposed to multi-specialty cosmetic reconstruction that I don’t believe I could have learned elsewhere because how many dentists want to take the time? There’s a great group of cosmetic dentists and specialists in the office who are willing to teach a lot after they get to know you and see that you are not transient.

New students do not initially get much one-on-one time with Dr. Dorfman because there can be many interns in the office and Dr. Dorfman wants to see which make the most effort before he decides to spend his time teaching them individually. In dental school, how many department chairmen or deans spend personal time teaching each student anyway? If you make a sincere effort you will learn a lot of dentistry.

Do not interview with him unless you are fully prepared and know all about the program and the practice from the website. Otherwise, you might get grilled and won’t be invited back.

When I first interviewed I had said that my father is a dentist and that I had some background and general knowledge about the field. Dr. Dorfman proceeded to ask me some questions that I should have been able to answer, such as the name of the final filling material used during root canal treatment (gutta-percha). Though I’m typically very calm and collected during interviews, on this particular day I froze and couldn’t come up with the answer. To make a long story short, while I knew the answer deep in the back of my mind, Dr. Dorfman could quickly tell that my knowledge of dentistry was very limited despite what I claimed to already know. I was fortunate enough to be invited back, but being honest with your experience and background can go a long way.

Dr. Dorfman can be really nice and funny despite new interns being frequently intimidated. He was always willing to help me. He wrote a nice letter of recommendation for my dental school application and even personally called each Dean of Admission before each interview.

The biggest players in dental software are only written for a Microsoft operating system. We have been informed this was at least partially related to financial incentives from MS. They tend to be overly complex and are not designed for current wireless communication.

Our data across 650 worldwide dental websites show significant interest in online dental software accessible particularly with an iPad. We launched 1dentist.com software in June 2009 in response to increasing interest in on demand dental software. The iPad could become huge for young dentists given the high costs associated with current office-based hardware, software and IT support.

Read The Wall Street Journal article.

It is interesting that the New York Times newspaper published a front page article today about the use of cone-beam CT scanners that produce 3-D images of teeth.  The concern is about the amount of radiation produced by these machines versus the actual diagnostic benefit for teeth braces or dental implants.  This Saturday is the beginning of the annual Greater NY Dental Meeting at the Javits Center in NYC which is the biggest dental convention in the world as ranked by attendance.

The article suggests patient caution when visiting an Oral Surgeon or Orthodontist who offer this type of CT scan x-ray and it also suggests patients avoid a dental office that still uses slow D-speed film for regular dental x-rays.  It appears the authors of the article laid out a fair discussion of the potential health risk from excessive dental radiation while exposing an unflattering light on the cone-beam manufacturers.  The article appears to tackle the promotion of the i-CAT from Imaging Sciences International, a division of Danaher Corporation.

The Center for Special Dentistry recommends this NY Times article to our readers.

1dentist, LLC one of the world’s largest dental internet companies launched 1dentist dental software online in October 2010. This free open source software has been used by thousands of dentists since 2003 but now it is being offered via the internet using secure 1dentist remote servers.  The intention is to provide young dentists the ability to manage their dental practice software with minimal hardware, networking and IT costs.  Some very influential dentists have joined the board of 1dentist, LLC to support the effort.

Visit 1dentist.com for more info.

One of our patients recently underwent surgery for complete right knee replacement.  Her orthopedic surgeon requested dental clearance beforehand.  This is an appropriate standard of medical care that is rarely considered.

Today Dr. Raymond Fonseca and his wife, Marilyn, came to visit our office to talk for a few hours.  Dr. Fonseca is the former Dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine and Editor of the definitive textbook series, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and Fonseca’s Oral and Maxillofacial Trauma.

Former UPenn Dean Raymond Fonseca (center) visits The Center for Special Dentistry

“Google’s “Do no evil” mantra may be ridiculed in some supposedly sophisticated quarters…”

The author appears to be minimizing, or even himself ridiculing, criticism of Google.  Perhaps he should carefully examine this criticism given that he is recommending the stock and is personally overexposed in a downfall.  That would be an interesting article more worthy of the WSJ.

Read The Wall Street Journal article.