Special General Membership Meeting: President’s Installation and Geriatrics and Teledentistry

THIS EVENT WILL BE ONLINE VIA ZOOM – THE LINK FOR THE EVENT WILL GO OUT 24 HOURS BEFORE THE EVENT

As our population ages, our older patients continue to seek out dental care but will have increasing numbers of medical, mental status, and functional issues that can make our usual treatment approaches frustratingly difficult, if not seemingly impossible. Adjustments to planning and providing care need to be made that may seem less than ideal.
While the techniques we use—the skill sets we have– to deliver care generally will not change with our older patients, the ways we plan care and the goals we set should, to ensure patient successes.
In this presentation we will discuss:
• A paradigm shift in thinking about how you can evaluate patients, plan care, and deliver the most appropriate treatments for each older patient
• How to recognize a patient’s mental status changes
• How to recognize your patient’s functional changes
• Identifying strategic teeth to restore to promote longer-term occlusal and prosthodontic functional abilities
• Some less invasive treatment strategies to manage decay
• Oral hygiene strategies to help preserve the restorative care you will provide
Join us for an informative evening focused on helping our older patients get the best care from you.

Biography:
Dr. Kawamura is a graduate of UCSF class of 1982. He did a GPR in Honolulu and practiced there until 1989. He then completed a Geriatric Dental Fellowship in Milwaukee and took a position with the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in San Francisco where he was the GPR Director for 8 years and coordinated oral care for the 120-bed Nursing Home Care Unit on campus.

For the past 20+ years, he has developed and maintained a small part-time portable dental practice with a mission of providing dental access for homebound elderly patients.

He completed his Prosthodontic residency at UCSF in 2004 and continued to work at the VA until 2016 and retired in 2017. He has been the Director of the Oral Health Strategic Plan for San Mateo County.

He is now semi-retired, works one day a week at Ravenwood Family Dental Clinic in East Palo Alto, and maintains a very small part-time portable dental practice.