Slow food, slow medicine, slow dentist… I think this is the order they showed up.

All these trends were born in Italy in the latest years and propose a sort of ethical approach to their respective fields.

The Slowmedicine website reads: Measured, Respectful, Equitable. We can perfectly agree with all of it, but I’ve got to admit that I just don’t understand why this would be associated to the idea of SLOW, at all costs.

It is surely important to defend meditative medicine and a personalized relationship between a patient and its doctor, but emphasizing the slowness aspect can only make a big mess.

There’s a risk of drawing an easy parallel between slowness and ethics. Something like “slow is good, fast is bad”, or, like in a Persian saying I’ve found on a aphorism website: “Devil is in speed, God is in slowness”. And then everybody’s mind immediately goes to our grandma’s warning:

SLOW AND STEADY WINS THE RACE!

Well, if grandma says so, it must be true! Then slow medicine be it!

Still, I wonder if, when grandma feels a slight pain in her chest which radiates to her left arm accompanied by great anxiety, she will give the same piece of advice to the emergency number telephone operator:

 “Young lady, I think I am having a heart attack…but, make sure the ambulance driver knows that SLOW AND STEADY WINS THE RACE”.

I’ll tell you some shocking truth that will outrage someone (oh well, if so, feel free to unsubscribe from our newsletter):

it is MUCH BETTER to do something well and fast, than to do something well but slowly.

So, doing something properly must be your first objective, but once you’ve succeeded in it, you can’t just sit back and put your feet up: you have to work constantly, to make that successful procedure faster and faster.

Remember, I’m talking about the operational time; as I explained elsewhere, biology has its times and you have to respect that.

 “But why should I bother? And then, everybody knows it: things done slowly are the best, by definition”

NOOOO!!!! They’re not the best: they’re just less powerful. Have you ever seen one of those cooking shows in which you see great chefs and their crew at work? Just one word echoes in the kitchen, all the time:

And this happens because if you’re not fast you cannot cook top-notch dishes…there are so many kinds of preparations, different cooking procedures, decorations and other aspects in every single dish that, if you want to cook it in a timely manner, you have to be incredibly fast, otherwise you either do it in a shitty way or you cannot finish it in time.

Therefore, that’s why “slow food” philosophy makes sense for who’s dining – those who are in the kitchen dance on a totally different music!

Now, let’s leave the top-notch cuisine field and go back to our business. The exact same principle applies in oral surgery: if you are not fast in performing certain surgeries, you either do a shitty job or you just avoid doing it. Everybody’s good at doing the simple stuff, but when the procedure becomes more complex, and with it also the steps and the preparation increase, the slow ones are left out, unless they have at their complete disposal a whole day, an operating theater, a patient under narcosis and someone who can cover their asses in case of necessity…But, as you know, most of us work in the clinic, with local anesthesia or, maybe, under sedation and, while we are operating, we’re the only oral surgeon in the nearby!

I have previously mentioned remembering very few memorable quotes from Uni, but I can recall very well a second-or-third -year Adjunct Professor in restorative dentistry saying:

 “…then there are very serious surgeries, like sinus lifting, that even I myself would not perform.”.

Besides the fact that I had no idea whatsoever of that a sinus lifting was, but since the PROFESSOR was the SUPERDENTIST for us and our reference in that moment, I assumed that this surgery was beyond my reach. We’re talking about 15 years ago.

I don’t know about you, but sinus lifting with lateral approach is now for me routine surgery, and for my patients it is “a little bone augmentation”. And this is because I do it FAST.

“How fast, exactly?”

You’ll eventually discover that by watching the video…the first part is in real time, the second one is speeded up to be as long as the song that plays in the background. For now, let me just tell you that the total timing for incision, sinus lifting, placing two implants and stitching up is eleven minutes and some spare seconds.

I know what you’re thinking:

 “BRAGGER!!! Quality in surgery is not in the speed”.

Instead, my dear friend, A BIG PART OF A QUALITY SURGERY IS IN THE SPEED INDEED, and speed also plays a big role in making the procedure less invasive.

Fifteen year ago, sinus lifting with lateral approach was an invasive procedure, so that the SUPERPROFESSOR didn’t feel confident in performing it: now it’s just minor bullshit…the patient you’ll see in the video didn’t even take a pain killer after the surgery!

If we consider more serious kinds of surgeries, like the reconstruction of an atrophic maxillary alveolar ridge, which must be carried out through a double sinus lifting and block bone grafts on all the jawbone, once it was necessarily carried out under narcosis, and using extra-oral donor. This means exorbitant costs, risks and discomfort connected to narcosis, being admitted, gait disturbance for a few days (let alone the poor quality of the bone from iliac crest). If you are fast, nowadays you can carry out a double harvesting from the mandibular ramuses and carry out that same surgery in a time that ranges from two and a half to four hours in conscious sedation, local anesthesia and without leaving your clinic.

You can’t compare how easy this is on the patient…not to mention the cost!

If you become faster, then you’ll be:

• LESS INVASIVE
• MORE USEFUL TO YOUR PATIENTS (managing to solve many of the problems that forced them to undergo invasive procedures previously)

Remember Morpheus’s words in THE MATRIX:

“You are faster than this. Don’t think you are, know you are. Come on. Stop trying to hit me and hit me!”

Now I’ll leave you to the video.

Tell me what you thought about it and don’t forget to leave your email below!