Entrevista Prof. Doutor Cesare Luzi
O curso pré-reunião, a cargo do Prof. Cesari Luzi, versa sobre o tema “TADS na ortodontia moderna: o que aprendemos nos últimos 20 anos”.
Aproveitamos, aliás, para o entrevistar.
Dr Cesare Luzi was born in Rome and graduated in Orthodontics at Aarhus University, in Denmark. He is very involved in different Orthodontic Societies in Europe and promoting this specialty. Although Dr Luzi practices in Rome and teaches in Ferrara Univesity, his connection to Aarhrus is maintained through classes on the annual short term course in Orthodontics.
Dr Luzi, thank you for answering this brief questions, it is an honor to have you in the Portuguese Orthodontic Society meeting next May, as the main speaker. You’ll have a full day to lecture on the topic of Temporary Anchorage Devices. But this is not the first time you come to Portugal with our Society, since in 2015 you were in Figueira da Foz for a hands-on course. So, since that date, what have been the main changes in your professional life and what has changed in the way you practice Othodontics?
Good morning to you all and let me start by saying that the pleasure and honor is absolutely mine. I am extremely happy to participate to such an important Meeting bringing my experience and thoughts about contemporary clinical orthodontics and skeletal anchorage in daily practice. Many things have changed in my daily practice in the last 10 years, in particular the routine use of digital technologies and the advent of palatal anchorage have been game changers in my everyday life. This will be fully covered in my course.
My professor Birte Melsen has always been an advocate of immediate loading, and our research supported this statement.
The theme of the Portuguese Meeting is Skeletal Anchorage. For those interested in the subject, could you reveal some of the topics you will cover on the pre-course day?
With great pleasure. I will discuss the basic indications and procedures that an orthodontist has to be involved personally in, the use of palatal anchorage in MARPE and orthopedic procedures to treat class III malocclusions, buccal and palatal TADs to handle impacted teeth and protocols to manage extraction cases.
You have some research of histology, bone healing and immediate loading of mini-implants. Based on these and your clinical experience, when is the best time to load temporary anchorage devices?
My professor Birte Melsen has always been an advocate of immediate loading, and our research supported this statement.
What do you think will change in Orthodontics for the next ten years and, on the other hand, what do you think it will not change in the same period of time?
Tools will change while solid diagnostic principles will remain. We will need to be able to use new tools and technologies in the proper way to our advantage respecting the basic principles of biology, diagnosis, biomechanics and treatment planning. We need to avoid appliance driven treatments and trends, which will continuously change, embracing what is new but without letting any tool determine our choices.
From all the treatment philosophies and the appliance systems you have been exposed through your professional life, is there one that has passed the test of time and that remains in your practice?
Many appliances come and go while others are here to stay. TADs, my topic of the course, are here to stay and after 20 years of use and a lot of experience I am sure that it is a simple matter of putting them into the correct indications, in order to take complete advantage of them in the right selected, and generally complex, cases.
A lot of clinicians find biomechanics very difficult and too theoretical. That’s why some may be probably attracted by the easy and almost magical solutions deployed in the social medias. What are your thoughts about this?
There are no shortcuts to excellence in our profession. Biomechanics is the common language of every orthodontist and has to be well known and understood, and considered when using any kind of appliance. Magical solutions simply do not exist and social media can be very dangerous if they tend to “promote” easy and magical solutions to complex problems. Generally they tend to show wonderful results to attract attention, but they present non-reviewed, cherry-picked, partially explained cases with the purpose of influencing the public. Scientific societies should be looked at as the reference for excellence and young orthodontists should look into board examinations to grow and improve their abilities, following their Univerisity studies.
As an expert in biomechanics, is there a paradigm shift in terms of biomechanics while treating cases with clear aligners?
I believe that aligners can easily provide forces but have trouble providing moments, making it difficult to control root movements. Attachments are in my opinion necessary to improve this issue, but still in our practice we limit aligner use to selected, mild to moderate, malocclusions
Is it possible to achieve good results with aligners in cases that need extractions?
Not in my hands……..
