Excellent dental implant meeting last Thursday.

The meeting was held at Dr. Bob Bressman's office near the Westfield, Old Orchard shopping mall in Skokie.

Straumann is a company that has been producing excellent dental implants and materials for them for years. Their SLActive surface, morse taper and Roxolid [titanium and zirconium formulated] implants seem to be significant steps forward in dental technology which will benefit us doctors helping patients with implants and our patients.

There are many good implants on the market and most of them are very good. The FDA protects all of us by certifying these products for dental use.

We restore a good number of implants in our office and are looking forward to taking advantage of this new technology to serve our patients even better.

Thanksgiving is a special time of the year. [Wednesday evening]

We are all fortunate to have wonderful friends and family. This is a special time of the year to take our blessings into consideration. I am thankful for all of you.

This Wednesday evening in our area there will be a multi-religiious gathering at a local Jewish 'Synagogue'. It is sponsored and organized by the Niles Township Clergy Association. My Roman Catholic parish of Saint Joan of Arc and pastor Father Kehoe are active in this group. This year it will be held at the Ezra Habonim Jewish Congregation at 4500 Dempster Street at 7:30pm in Skokie. This gathering will include: Catholics, Baptists, Bahai, Sikhs, Buddhists, Methodists, Jews, Muslims, Lutherans, .... It is a general prayer gathering with music and short thoughtful sermons/speeches which is inspirational and thought provoking.

It usually lasts about an hour. There are snacks served afterward and a mingling of those in attendance. I just found the details for this particular event via Google. There is a sign in front of the Jewish Congregation site on Dempster announcing this event.

There are similar gatherings in many areas. If you or yours are not going to be in the Skokie area at this time you can probably find a similar event close to your home. I highly recommend this type of service and usually attend this particular gathering annually. This type of event is traditionally done on the evening before Thanksgiving and it will be the 40th annual gathering of this type by the Niles Township Clergy Association.

I am thankful for all of you and our dental care team at Smiles of Skokie. It is a pleasure and honor to be able to care for all of you and help you with your health!

It would be nice to see you at this event if you can attend. It is a busy family/friend time and many of you will be too involved in holiday preparations to attend but all of you will be in my thoughts and prayers.

I wish all of you and all of yours the best always!

Last week was busy. Seeing patients, dental meetings, biking and flying.

It was good and busy. A busy week of work with patients a couple of dental meetings, flew and biked too! And, ... it started with Halloween.

We had a good week in the office. It is great to be helping patients with their dental problems. Our team at the office is excellent. We helped a number of patients with a variety of problems. We dealt with a number of implant restorations, denture patients, patients with gum problems and helped a number of children. It was satisfying to be able to help and make a difference for all of these members of our dental family. We could be a bit busier. We are still trying to help Michelle work on Thursdays too.

We had a number of new patients recently too. One lady is a native South American from Guyana. We have had a large family of patients whose heritage is from India but their parents and grandparents were raised in the South American country of Guyana in the capital of Georgetown. Apparently there is a fairly large contingent of the Guyana population originally from India. It is very interesting how our country is a magnet for such a large variety of people all adding to our diversity and enriching our culture.

The meeting on Tuesday evening was given by Dr.s Marty Rogers and Matt Davis. It addressed the most recent thoughts on cracked teeth and root canal treatment. They did an excellent job.

Wednesday was a meeting of the Northern Illinois Dental Specialists at which I was a guest. Dr. Burgess formerly of New Orleans [before hurricane Katrina] and now of the University of Alabama dental school is a well know restorative dentistry expert. His presentation was outstanding. It is good to keep up on the latest technology in order to be able to serve my 'dental family' as well as possible.

I biked a few mornings last week and was able to fly last evening. The flight with 5 of my powered paragliding friends near Kankakee was a great way to end the week.

This is how a good friend of mine trains powered paraglider pilots near Christmas, Florida:

http://vimeo.com/16502027

The above is an excellent video showing the training process in summary. Bob is an excellent student and Eric Dufour is an excellent instructor [perhaps the best in the country]. It doesn't always go as smoothly as depicted here. There are some good instructors in the midwest too.

My photos from last evening's flying:

http://picasaweb.google.com/davidmcw3/PPG101106Koerner#

It was a bit late when we launched and the light wasn't as good as I would have liked for photography. My camera regularly let me know that the battery was dying in spite of it being fully charged just before leaving home. Apparently the camera didn't like the cold. It was about 40 degrees or a little less as we flew. Colder weather is definitely making its way into our too near future.

My best to all of you and all of yours always!

My real pilot friend on Fox News.

I fly a powered paraglider and ride a bicycle. I now have a number of friends met through these two activities who are great people and wonderful friends. Scott Clark is one of these people. We have traveled to a number of local and not so local sites to fly paragliders with and without power. We have had many great times together.

We flew Sunday evening and he mentioned to me that Fox News Chicago was going to interview him for his Blue Sky Taxi service for which he is the chief pilot.

Here is the link:

http://www.myfoxchicago.com/dpp/good_day/blue-sky-taxi-new-flight-way-planes-scott-clark-pilot-20101011

He did a great job! Check it out.

Volunteer/travel opportunity for a great cause.

We had an interesting speaker this week at our Skokie Valley Rotary Club meeting. Patti Vile is a very interesting and caring lady. She has been organizing trips to New Orleans to help hurricane Katrina victims by bringing groups there. She organizes all of the logistics.

Please visit her web site at www.volunteerexpeditions.org for more information.

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!