Is Implant Dentistry a Specialty?
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Posted on 5/8/2023 by Greg Kammeyer |
| Is Implant Dentistry a Specialty? Traditionally the American Dental Association, a trade organization has recognized which areas of dentistry are specialties. Specialties are recognized by the ADA “ in those areas where advanced knowledge and skills, which are greater than those taught in a pre-doctoral dental education program and are separate and unique from the other specialties to maintain or restore oral health.” In the last few decades, a number of long standing “sub specialties” have applied to the ADA for recognition as a dental specialty, with limited success in being recognized. As a result an independent American Board of Dental Specialties (ABDS) was formed. Unlike that the AMA (a trade association) doesn’t decide which areas of medicine are specialties, dentistry hasn’t moved away from a trade association dictating policies. Hence the ABDS recognizes additional specialty areas that the ADA does not. There have been a long standing rejections of applications with countless submissions by several groups in dentistry that have their own journals, have nationally organized meetings and have Board Certification requirements as well as many of them have graduate training in university settings similar to “ADA recognized specialties” world widee. They believe other areas of dentistry are not appropriately recognized by the ADA and have recognized the American Board of Oral Implantology/Implant Dentistry, the American Board of Oral Medicine, the American Board of Oral facial Pain and the American Dental Board of Anesthesiology (which received ABDS specialty recognition long before the ADA accepted it). What does this mean to the patient seeking Cosmetic Dentistry or Implant Dentistry? With cosmetic dentistry there are long standing university based programs, for restoring teeth, which includes cosmetic procedures. For Implant Dentistry, there are 2 long standing U.S. programs for 2-3 years of graduate training solely in Implant Dentistry. Many more university programs are beginning in the last few years, to add similar programs. Several ADA recognized university programs have been training their specialists to place and/or restore implants. For all these programs, this is a smaller part of their overall training. |