By School of Dentistry - November 26, 2012
A small team of LLU School of Dentistry faculty and graduate program students may have saved lives by providing volunteer oral cancer screenings at the November 16, 2012, annual Speaking of Women’s Health Conference at the Ontario Convention Center.
 
Drs. Joshua Cartter, Ewa Parciak, and Mathew Kattadiyil pause to pose.

Mathew Kattadiyil, DDS, MDS, MS’99, director, Advanced Specialty Education Program in Prosthodontics, Andrea Lewis Beckford, SD’05, MBA’07, assistant professor, Restorative Dentistry, Dr. Joshua Cartter (3rd year resident, Advanced Specialty Education Program in Prosthodontics), and Dr. Ewa Parciak (2nd year resident, Advanced Specialty Education Program in Prosthodontics) performed oral cancer screenings on 141 attendees of the conference.

 
Dr. Parciak performs an oral cancer screening.

Among the women screened, the doctors identified 15 who presented with areas of concern or abnormalities that needed follow-up with the patient’s general practitioner or specialist.  “If the screenings caught something that would otherwise have gone undetected, then the event was more than successful,” says Tina Malmberg, manager, Faculty Dental Practice at LLUSD’s Center for Dentistry and Orthodontics.

 
Drs. Andrea Beckford and Joshua Cartter visit with conference attendees.

Beyond his oversight of the School’s clinical presence, Dr. Kattadiyil spoke to a breakout session about “The Power of a Smile,” emphasizing the life enhancing effect of healthy, beautiful teeth on self-confidence and overall quality of life. Dr. Kattadiyil reviewed the dental options for maintaining the perfect smile and said, “ In this day and age when the patient has multiple options for treatment to create that beautiful smile, a prosthodontist can be a tremendous resource in bringing different specialists together and lead that team to plan, sequence and achieve the most favorable result in highly complex situations.” 

 
Dr. Parciak speaks with a screening subject while Krista Juhl and Tina Malmberg visit with conference attendees.

Krista Juhl, MBA, director of marketing, arranged for the School of Dentistry’s presence at the Loma Linda University Health sponsored Speaking of Women’s Health Conference and provided 1,000 women with information about its Center for Dentistry and Orthodontics.