Low-Tech, High-Skill Treatment in a Digital World

After dental school at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, Dr. David Saver was accepted into the orthodontic residency program at the University of North Carolina, where he received exposure to modern surgical-orthodontic treatment that he couldn’t have had anywhere else at that time. Afterward, he accepted a faculty position in the dental school at University of Alabama-Birmingham and began helping establish their formal orthognathic surgery program. This is where he learned the importance of focusing on the full face.

His appreciation for soft tissue evaluation grew as he began incorporating facial plastic surgeons into the macro-esthetic planning sessions at both the school and his private practice, he also started receiving invitations to speak to multidisciplinary esthetic groups and found himself in the audience listening to presentations from non-orthodontists. He learned two valuable lessons. First, what dentists are doing in esthetics and how they think— and second, the wide degree of understanding and misunderstanding that dentists have about orthodontic diagnosis and treatment. As a result, it has become one of his missions to educate dentists about contemporary orthodontic thinking.