DENTAL ANESTHESIOLOGY
—‘ensuring safety and comfort’
Beginning July 1, 2015, the DA
program will be three years in
length, in conformation with the
new nationwide requirement by the
Commission on Dental Accreditation.
Since the inception of LMC Dental’s
Dental Anesthesiology (DA)
program in 2008, 20 residents have
graduated, fully equipped to tackle
the diverse challenges of modern
dental anesthesiology. Graduates of
the DA program currently practice
dental anesthesiology in a variety of
settings such as ambulatory surgical
centers, a pediatric hospital, mobile
office based anesthesia provider and
attending in dental anesthesiology
residency program.
The majority of resident training
takes place in the main O.R. suite
at Lutheran Medical Center, where
residents are directly involved in
providing anesthesia for a wide
variety of general surgical cases
and dental cases including children,
special needs patients, phobic
adults, the medically compromised,
patients with extensive treatment
plans, and emergency and trauma
patients. The program as a whole
provides an in depth and varied
anesthesia experience ranging from
the LMC main OR suite to offsite
rotations that focus on mobile office
based anesthesia delivery and the
anesthetic management of the
special needs patient.
26
The offsite rotations include Solis
Surgical Arts Center, a state-of-theart multi-specialty surgery center
in Los Angeles, CA, dedicated to
the delivery of dental care under
anesthesia, mostly for special needs
patients. During this three month
rotation residents are also given the
option to participate in the operatoranesthetist mode of dental care.
The mobile office based rotation
anesthesia rotation in Phoenix,
Arizona provides residents with
experience in mobile anesthesia
delivery, bringing anesthesia services
to a number of dental offices in the
greater Phoenix area. This length
of this rotation is two months.
Because the resources of the LMC
Dental Department are as deep as
its commitment to excellence—the
housing, travel and other costs of the
logistics involved in rotating New
York based DA residents to these
locations are provided as a benefit of
the residency program.
Sim Man Emergency Training
sessions
Drs. Reed and Okundaye traveled
to Brooklyn in 2014 to run Sim Man
Emergency Training sessions for the
dental anesthesiology residents. This
was a significant opportunity for the
residents to learn from dental
anesthesia experts.
Charles Azzaretti, DDS
Program Director, Dental Anesthesiology
LMC Dental’s Dental
Anesthesiology class size
increased from 4 to 6 residents
for the class of 2013.
Nishant Chauhan, DMD, MPH,
MBA, Alum:
“The LMC Dental Anesthesiology
residency is everything I wanted
it to be…I regularly provide
treatment to pediatric, adult,
and geriatric patients for a variety
of procedures, both medical
and dental. The experience has
been outstanding. I am only half
way through my residency and
I already feel ready to provide
quality care to patients on my
own.”