The key to adult orthodontics.

Let me tell you a story about my introduction to interdisciplinary dentistry. After I had been in private orthodontic practice for about 5 years, I thought that I had a good grip on the clinical knowledge that I needed to manage my patients. In fact, I had just secured the adult referrals from one of the finest restorative dentists in my community. Life was good. Then one afternoon, my receptionist received a call from this fine restorative dentist, who told her that he wanted to take me to dinner to discuss something. Since I was busy with a patient, I asked my receptionist to find out why he wanted to take me to dinner. She stated that he would tell me when we met. Frankly, at that time in my life, my wife and I were busy raising children, and going out for dinner with a referring dentist wasn’t that convenient. But he was a good referral source, and I did not want to offend him. So, I agreed to meet with him. What I did not know was that he had similarly called a periodontist, an endodontist, a pediatric dentist, and an oral and maxillofacial surgeon and invited them to the same dinner. In fact, when we met, we were all rather surprised that the group was so large. This nice restorative dentist had reserved a small conference room at a local hotel and had prearranged for dinner to be served to our group at his cost. Nice guy. But I knew that there must be a motive for this gathering. Then, when dinner was finished, the restorative dentist asked the servers to clear the plates, leave the coffee, and close the door on their way out of the room. When the door was shut, the room became quiet. We, the “specialists,”were waiting for the explanation of why we had been called together. Then the nice restorative dentist shared his vision with us. He told us that he was changing his style of practice. No longer was he going to extract any teeth. He would send all extractions to the oral surgeon at the table. No longer would he restore teeth in children. He would refer all children to the pediatric dentist sitting to my right. No longer would he do any more root canal therapy. He would refer all of