The office will be closed 7/24/10 until 8/2/10.

All of us need a vacation from time to time. Your team at Smiles of Skokie is no exception to this rule. The office will be closed as noted in the title of this update. No one will be available to answer your calls to the office during this time. Dr. Susan Doroshow [847-677-2774] has agreed to help our 'Dental Family' with any emergencies that might occur during our absence. We thank her very sincerely for helping all of us in this capacity if the need should arrive.

Lorraine will be traveling to California. Lori is in Arizona with her children spending time with her mother. I will be traveling across Iowa with the www.RAGBRAICUBS.org group doing the RAGBRAI [www.ragbrai.org] bicycle ride. This is my 9th year doing this event. We will again be raising money for Camp Courageous in Monticello, IA, for handicapped children. This is a very worthwhile charity. Their web site is http://www.campcourageous.org/ if you would like more information.

Dr. Doroshow's office is located at 3901 Howard Street, in Skokie, which is just a block east of Crawford on the south side of the street. She is a wonderful dentist, a member of the study club that I am in, a good friend, and a fellow dog lover. You will be in good hands if you have an emergency while I am gone.

Hopefully you will have time to get some rest and relaxation this summer too.

Thanks for your understanding.

Your team at Smiles of Skokie wishes you the best always!

Amalgam issues. We have been safe for years!

There is a movement in the federal govenment to mandate mercury amalgam separators for dental offices. We have portable, self contained units [which we have had for over 12 years] and they are not only more sanitary [no waste lines running in the floors or ceilings] but they also have amalgam separators built in to them as they are produced.

The stand alone unit is the best for sanitation and safety in a dental office. We are very happy to have these units. They are more expensive but well worth the cost.

Our summer schedule.

The office will be closed this coming Saturday. We don't see patients on holiday weekends. Your oral health care team needs time to regenerate with longer weekends too.

The office will be close from July 24th through the 31st. This is our summer vacation week.

Losing weight without starving.

There is a new approach to losing weight by eating foods that control craving. Dr. Leslie Van Romer has done a lot of research into this subject. She has many years of experience. The only ones that won't like what she has found are the large corporate interests that have a vested interest in hooking you on their products!

Please visit www.gettingintoyourpants.com for more information.

This is common sense, non-hype information!

Implants, new young patient, ....

It has been an interesting week. We had a patient very recently with 3 new implants restored in on upper right, lower left and lower right. We had another new patient who is only 2 1/2 years old fall out of a stroller and do damage to upper front teeth. Another patient had some nasty, viral ulcers that needed laser treatment. Another patient who has only come in for emergent care hopefully will come in to get 'caught up' very soon.

The patient with the new implants is doing very well. The lab did a beautiful job. They look good and are feeling good according to the patient too. They do feel different because the porcelain has a slightly different quality than tooth structure. He just needed a minor fine-tuning of his bite on Monday.

The young patient fell out of a stroller and displaced her 2 front teeth. There is also swollen gum around these teeth and a swollen lip. She is a sweetheart and doing well. She was seen in a hospital emergency room on Tuesday when this accident happened and then seen in the office on Friday morning. She is still sore. X-rays were taken in the hospital. We took a couple of photos with our intraoral camera this morning. Displaced teeth in young children will usually reposition themselves normally without intervention by a dentist. We will just need to observe and check for infection or nerve death in the future. We may need to take more x-rays to follow up in the future.

The patient with the viral ulcer problem was treated with our dental laser. He has had this treatment a couple of times before. He relies to some extent on other medications but finds that the laser is much more effective and provides almost immediate relief. We also find that when this type of infection occurs and is treated with the laser it doesn't recur as much or usually not in the same location.

It has been a good week!

Vacation: March 29th through April 4th.

The office is closed for the time period above. Most of us are going out of town. We are observing some holidays as well as wishing and praying for the best for all of you, our dental family.

There are two highly qualified dentists who are kind enough to help you with emergencies if the need arises while we are gone. They are Dr. Doroshow & Dr. Sodini.

Dr. Doroshow is a colleague of mine and we are in the same study club and members of the Chicago Dental Society. Dr. Doroshow's office is near Howard and Crawford in Skokie and the office phone number is 847-677-2774.

Dr. Sodini's office is about a block east of my office on Oakton and the phone number for his office is 847-676-9292.

It is a relief for me to know that my dental family will be in good hands while I am on vacation.

CDS meeting

We have been fairly busy at the office. Our usual assortment of patients needing a variety of care has been a little on the light side due to the economy but we are doing pretty well.

The Chicago Dental Society Midwinter meeting was good. There were about 32,000 attendees. I managed a large meeting on Saturday as the Chicago Dental Society representative.

The Smiles of Skokie team went to the meeting as a group on Thursday. We updated our infection control knowledge and added a new hand cleanser system to the office thanks to Dr. Molinari's course. Dr. Roger Levine helped us with our office management skills and provided valuable information to our entire team. It was a good day! [Traffic was terrible in the morning. We drove down in 1 vehicle.]

I was at the meeting on my own on Friday. Dr. Carl Misch's implant lecture was very good. He had some excellent research data and provided a good scientific basis for bridge and implant restorations of a variety of types. He is a very knowledgable and opinionated lecturer.

Saturday, Heidi & I attended separate courses. Mine was on health and stress given by Dr. Uche Odiatu from Toronto, and Heidi took part in a course on dental instrument sharpening and maintenance. Both of us learned a lot. We try to be your positive, health-optimizing resource and Dr. Uche's material will help us serve our patients even better.

It was a good meeting as usual. This year it was held in McCormick Place West for the first time. This venue meant that this huge meeting wasn't scattered over as large of an area as it usually is.

A recent porcelain veneer case.

I firmly believe in only doing the most conservative, best option for my patients. This patient has done a lot of whitening. He wanted a better smile but a natural appearance. We were both happy with the results.

There are more expensive, brand-name veneers. There are also very high strength, extremely well done porcelain veneers fabricated by less well known excellent laboratories. This case was done using the services of the latter type of lab.

Whenever doing veneers or implants for a patient the patients bite and habits need to be evaluated carefully. This patient elected to have a nightguard made and is using it every night to protect his investment in his smile.

Best of Business Award.

I don't know how we were nominated or received this award but it is a nice thing to have. Please click on the title of this post or visit http://www.smallbusinesscommerceassociation.org/Default.aspx to view the web site for this organization.

Any comments about the organization granting this award would be welcome.

Saturday office hours in December.

We will be in the office on Saturday, December 6th, and Saturday, December 19th. Tuesday, December 8th, I have a study club meeting to attend and we will be closing a little earlier.