Fourth Annual Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Residents’ Night - “An Evening with Leonard Kaban”

The Section of Dentistry and Oral Health of the New York Academy of Medicine was created to support an oral health component to the Academy’s mission of supporting urban health care, as well as to be a place where dental and medical professionals could meet and exchange ideas. The section on Dentistry and Oral Health welcomes all Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (OMS) residents from the greater New York area to attend this special event.

We are fortunate to have Leonard B. Kaban, DMD, MD, FACS as our guest lecturer.

The discovery of ether anesthesia has been labelled as the greatest medical discovery of all time and has facilitated the development of surgery, the care of surgical patients and has relieved a major source of human suffering. This important relationship of the dental profession to anesthesia began with events in Boston in 1849 and persists to this day. The story of the discovery of anesthesia, its early dissemination and controversies and intrigues is an interesting story.

Dr. Kaban will talk about the institution, the players and the events of the early use of ether anesthesia in Boston. He will also highlight the significance of the lesser known role of Nathan Cooley Keep in disseminating the use of ether anesthesia after the first demonstration, and finally mention the current role of OMFS in ambulatory anesthesia in the United States.

About the Speaker
Leonard B. Kaban, DMD, MD, FACS served as Walter C. Guralnick Professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and Chairman of the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at Harvard School of Dental Medicine and Chief of the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Service at Massachusetts General Hospital from 1994 through 2015. He is now the Walter C. Guralnick Distinguished Professor and Chief, Emeritus of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at Harvard and Mass General.

Dr. Kaban is the author or co-author of 5 books and over 340 original papers on such topics as hemifacial microsomia, jaw tumors in children, vascular anomalies and reconstructive surgery.  He is actively engaged in research on the biology and clinical applications of cranio-maxillofacial distraction osteogenesis, novel minimally invasive surgical techniques, and the biology and novel therapies for giant cell lesions and other mesenchymal tumors of the jaws. In the past, Dr. Kaban has published his research on wound healing in a fetal cleft lip model and induced osteogenesis using demineralized bone matrix. He has conducted numerous clinical studies involving distraction, reconstructive, craniofacial and orthognathic surgery, facial trauma, nerve injuries, facial asymmetry and jaw tumors in children.

Dr. Kaban’s primary clinical interests include pediatric oral and maxillofacial surgery, mesenchymal jaw tumors, hemifacial microsomia, osteoinduction, and minimally invasive surgery. With co-editor Dr. Maria Troulis, he published the 2nd edition of Kaban’s Pediatric Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery in 2004.