Critical care: College of Dentistry looks back on tradition, ahead to breakthroughs

Patients line up for dental care in the clinic area of Old Dental in 1900. Photo by Samuel Calvin courtesy of the Calvin Collection.

Most of the nearly 130,000 clinic visits in the UI College of Dentistry every year are by patients who come from less than 50 miles away.

But these patients could see a dentist almost anywhere in Iowa and benefit from how the college has shaped dentistry, according to Michael Kanellis, professor of pediatric dentistry and assistant dean of patient care in the College of Dentistry.

“Everything we do, from teaching to research and outreach, is focused on what matters most: the patient,” Kanellis says. “That means much more than just taking care of the patient in the chair in front of us.”

This month, the College of Dentistry begins celebrating the University’s 125-year-old tradition of dental care, research, and outreach.

The tradition dates to 1882 with the founding of a dental department made up of four unpaid faculty members, a class of 14 students, and borrowed barbershop chairs in a space that once had been a professor’s living quarters.

Today, as the only provider of dental education in Iowa, the College of Dentistry offers training in all specialty disciplines of dentistry, with 90 full-time faculty members, almost 400 students, and a Dental Science Building that includes a surgical suite, a central sterilization area (unusual in dental schools when the building was constructed in 1973), 10 departmental clinics with 252 patient cubicles, three small auditoriums, a floor of research space, and a simulation laboratory.

More than 80 percent of the state’s practicing dentists are alumni of the University’s dental college, which provides a strong curriculum in problem-based and experiential learning, dentistry for geriatric patients and adults with special needs, and outreach in Iowa communities.

The college also advances care through research. The college’s 1973 move from Trowbridge Hall on the east side of campus to its current home, the Dental Science Building, on the other side of the river, not only provided more space for teaching and patient care but also created an entire wing of lab space for research. Over the past three decades, the college has emerged as an international leader in research on tooth decay, flouride, and cleft palate and other craniofacial anomalies.

Kanellis says probably the biggest change he and his colleagues have seen over the past 30 years is that today many more people have much healthier mouths. Thanks to much better preventive care, many people now visit dental clinics not to feel better but to look better, spurring the new field of aesthetic dentistry. Over the last 20 years, implants have become such a popular way of restoring lost or damaged teeth that the college opened an implant clinic.

The future of dentistry holds promise for a vaccine against tooth decay, precision laser surgery, and even regrowing lost or damaged teeth, according to Ron Elvers, director of clinics and clinical associate professor of oral pathology, radiology, and medicine. Recent plans to remodel Dental Science Building labs and clinics will keep the college on the forefront of such advances, he says.

“Our building has served us well for more than three decades, but we need to meet the needs of the next 30 years,” Elvers says.

The greatest need is breaking barriers to care, according to Kanellis. He and other UI dentistry faculty, as well as students, see severe dental problems every week in cities and towns across Iowa.

“The most pervasive barrier we see is financial,” Kanellis says. “Both low-income children and adults often have difficulty affording dental care, and they often have trouble finding dentists who accept Medicaid, or they may not have any insurance coverage at all.”

The College of Dentistry is dedicated to increasing access through direct patient care, outreach, and even research, Kanellis says. [Kanellis describes the college’s efforts in more detail in last issue’s lead story at www.uiowa.edu/~fyi/issues/issues2006_v43/04092007/feature1.html—ed.]

Before the college celebrates its next big anniversary, Kanellis would like to see affordable and accessible care become a realistic goal. 

“With every year come new opportunities and hope for improvement,” Kanellis says. “We need to increase the number of people with insurance coverage and improve the public programs we have, because it is simply not right that not everyone can afford good care. The college is also forming new partnerships with others dedicated to oral health, and we’re continuing efforts in research. All these things show promise.”                                                            

by Gary Kuhlmann