Penn Dental Medicine Student Takes First Place in SCAD Clinical Case Competition
Philadelphia – Fourth-year Penn Dental Medicine student William Kessler (D’20) has been recognized for excellence in clinical esthetic dentistry, taking first place in the clinical case report competition at the recent Society for Color and Appearance in Dentistry (SCAD) 11th Annual Conference, held September 13-14, in Newport Beach, Calif. He won for a study titled “Approach for Predictably Matching a Veneer and Crown in Maxillary Central Incisors: A Digital Technique,” which he conducted with faculty in the School’s Department of Preventive & Restorative Sciences.
“Matching the shades of adjacent veneers and crowns on discolored abutment teeth is a major esthetic challenge. William presented a novel approach using different ceramics with updated CAD/CAM and adhesive bonding technologies to address this clinical dilemma in an exemplary patient case,” says Dr. Markus Blatz, Professor and Chair of the Department of Preventive & Restorative Sciences, who was Kessler’s senior advisor.
Kessler’s direct supervisor on the project was Dr. Julian Conejo, Chairside CAD/CAM Director, with CAD/CAM Lab Director Michael Bergler and Dr. Leslie Stone-Hirsch, Clinical Associate Professor of Restorative Dentistry, also supporting the study as co-authors.
Two others Penn Dental Medicine students — Catherine Dang (D’20) and Nesim Levin (D’20) — also participated in the clinical case poster competition, presenting “Resin-Bonded Fixed Dental Prostheses: The Digital Approach” (Dang C, Conejo J, Han S, Blatz MB) and “Reproducing Natural Esthetics with a Zirconia-reinforced Silicate Ceramic” (Levin N, Conejo J, Santos T, Blatz MB), respectively.
“It was great to have Penn Dental Medicine so well represented by our students and faculty at one of the most important international conferences on dental esthetics,” says Dr. Blatz.