Bridging Cultures - A Dental Perspective with Dr Isabella Rocchietta

🎙️ Ready for an enchanting conversation that delves into the world of cosmetic dentistry? Join us as we venture behind the scenes with Dr. Chris Leech interviewing Dr. Isabella Rocchietta, a dental luminary with a rich professional journey spanning from Milan to London. ✨

🌟 With a career adorned by glittering achievements, a profound research background, and her current engagement at the prestigious Eastman Institute, Isabella opens up about her favorite publications and remarkable encounters with renowned figures in the cosmetic dentistry realm. From captivating stories "from both sides of the dental chair" to her unwavering passion for her craft, get ready for an unforgettable auditory delight! 🎉

🔍 As our conversation deepens, we immerse ourselves in the intriguing realm of biomaterials, exchanging insights from our professional journeys. Isabella offers a rare glimpse into the cultural subtleties of cosmetic dentistry, having practiced in both Milan and London. We also touch upon an upcoming, must-attend event in London, promising an exceptional networking opportunity for dental professionals. But wait, there's more! Isabella fearlessly shares her experiences with complications and setbacks, shedding light on a topic rarely discussed in dentistry. 💪

💡 Whether you're an aspiring dentist or simply curious about the field, this episode is brimming with wisdom, insights, and candid experiences that are sure to leave you enlightened and inspired. 

🎧 #CosmeticDentistryTalks #DentalInsights #BehindTheScenes #DentalProfessionals #EnlightenmentThroughConversation

For the video versions of all BACD Podcasts head to https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_QEFI0rmiaNYJmACUGLq8Re3uZ0icAOU&si=qw2NCg1iBZ7iKBkU

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to the official podcast of the British Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry. Whether you're a seasoned dental professional, an eager student or simply someone curious about the intricacies of cosmetic dentistry, you're in the right place. Here at the BACD, we bring together the brightest minds, groundbreaking research and innovative practices from across the UK and beyond. In each episode, we aim to delve deep, offering insights, sharing stories and demystifying the beautiful world of cosmetic dentistry. I'm Simon Chard, president of the BACD. I'm thrilled to have you join us on this enlightening journey. Let's dive right in.

Speaker 2: 0:43

So hello, isabella. Thank you so much for joining me this evening. You're kindly giving up some of your time so that we can discuss what you're going to be doing at this year's BACD conference.

Speaker 3: 0:53

Yes indeed. Thank you very much, christopher, and thank you for this wonderful organization.

Speaker 2: 0:58

Not at all. So obviously you are familiar with London because you're a very exotic speaker. You're not just confined to one international location. You literally work in two different sites, right?

Speaker 3: 1:12

Well, yes, but to be fair, I normally work in one country. However, circumstances have brought me to London many years ago, where I spent beautiful eight years of my life, and I have been working full time in London all of these eight years, after which, due to personal reasons my husband in particular we had to go back to Italy, and so we transferred family and, clearly, work as well in Italy. So now my base when it comes to work base and family base is in Milan, in Italy. However, my heart is in London as well, and I couldn't let go of London, so I've kept basically one week out of the four in the month back in London, where it's my second home. Let's put it that way.

Speaker 2: 2:04

So is your passport. Have you got a British passport or an Italian passport?

Speaker 3: 2:08

I have an Italian passport. But, I'm applying for my sons to have a British passport.

Speaker 2: 2:14

I see, and is your husband Italian or is he British?

Speaker 3: 2:17

Yes, he's Italian.

Speaker 2: 2:20

So what brought you to the UK for such a protracted amount of time in the first place Is that where you met your husband.

Speaker 3: 2:25

No, my husband brought me because of his job. He's a lawyer and we moved because of his job and then we moved back to Milan because of his job. So I'm the follower, got you.

Speaker 2: 2:37

So obviously I was reading your CV which, for anyone listening to this, you can download from Isabella's website. It is impressive, to say the least. It is a long document and so hence I was reading on there at where you trained and obviously about nationality and things like that. What are you most proud of on that CV?

Speaker 3: 2:59

Without any doubt, my time spent in Boston where, because I've always been very stubborn and there was a possibility to go and become a research fellow at the Harvard Dental School.

Speaker 3: 3:16

And this, for me, was a great opportunity because, you have to consider, I studied in Italy, in Milan, in Mayuni, and then I went through the typical training at the university hospital in Milan. And then the idea of leaving and going to the States and having to meet in person the big Nevins, ron Nevins and Mark and all the you know, jofia Rellini, who's a chair at that time, really these big personalities, for me was a dream. And so I won a scholarship which was quite peculiar because it was meant to be won by medical students, not by dental students. Somehow I managed to get that Don't ask me how, but because I don't know and yes, and then I left and I spent beautiful, beautiful time there and I think that really honestly changed the course of, in a way, the career, because it taught me how to do research, it taught me how to write and, in a way, I was in the right moment in the right place.

Speaker 2: 4:20

Okay, and looking at your CV here, did that start around 1998? Is that right? Is that right it says?

Speaker 3: 4:25

here 1998, I started my A-levels. I'm not that old.

Speaker 2: 4:28

Oh, no, no, no. I'm just going to start here because, well, this is so stuff on here it's incredible to keep up with.

Speaker 1: 4:34

So we've got the University of.

Speaker 2: 4:35

Milan, 1998. We then got San Paolo in Milan in 2000. Yes, new York in 2003. Correct, boston comes up here. I see 2004, 2005. So I say absolutely incredible. And, of course, the other thing that catches my eye, and certainly our listeners, I'm sure from 2014, you are the lecturer for the Diploma and Implant Entry at our Much Loved Eastman Institute.

Speaker 3: 5:00

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 2: 5:02

So, and that's what you still do now.

Speaker 3: 5:04

Yes, so that has been going on for now quite a long time and, yeah, it's always a pleasure. But now, specifically, I'm working with Francesco D'Auto, the chair of the Perry Department at UCL, and we're doing lots of interesting research which I will show, possibly in London in November.

Speaker 2: 5:24

Well, you have led me on perfectly, because I say, once we get past the first few pages, we then got all your publications on here and everything and obviously. So there's lots of publications going on here. It's your favorite publication. You've done.

Speaker 3: 5:38

I suppose that my favourite publication was the very first publication that we did. Well, I have two favourites. I have the massively, which I didn't like doing it because it was too much of a hassle, but the first systematic review on vertical re-documentation, which was presented at the EFP consensus conference, and that's a 2008 one. But it took me I mean it was easier to produce my three children. To be honest with you, it was just like so long and so intense. And I still remember, around Christmas time, when Maritza Tonetti, who was in charge of the reviewers, he called me and said no, no, no, no, no. This has to be redone, and at that stage I literally wanted to cry, and so that was a big, a big hassle. Happy and glad, I did it. Never do it again.

Speaker 2: 6:34

Because I see here you say that was 2008,. Here, straight off 2009,. Vertical re-documentation, again by means of guided bone regeneration past, present and future, edited by none other than Daniel Boozer. So there we go, lots of big names all over the place there. So tell us, what do we have to look forward to from you in November?

Speaker 3: 6:57

I think that one of the most interesting aspects of the lecture will be will be based on, first of all, how clinical it will be, how practical, because, at the end of the day, I am a clinician, I'm lucky enough to treat patients on an everyday basis and I think that, for us clinicians, this is exactly what gives us the energy to carry on, day after day, the gratification that we receive from our patients.

Speaker 3: 7:25

And so the actual presenting the difficulty is presenting the, you know, the challenges of our profession. I think that's something that I'm very honest about. I don't like to show cases, just simplifying them and thinking that they're straightforward. Those cases require so much that I'd like to come to put this across. And the second aspect is complications, which I'm very keen in sharing, because normally speakers like to share somebody else's complications, whereas I like to share my own complications, to show when things go wrong, how to deal with them and, frankly, how to improve yourself to the point that the percentage decreases significantly Once you. You know, you always say, and you would confirm that you learn way more than when things go not as expected, rather than everything flows well.

Speaker 3: 8:19

So, yeah, so these two aspects, I think I'm very honest, I'm very, you know, practical and why do you think in our profession?

Speaker 2: 8:27

because, as you say, that is unusual. Why is it we don't talk about failure more do you think in dentistry? Because, we've all got failures, and if you haven't, you haven't done enough right.

Speaker 3: 8:36

Yes, of course, but it's. I think it's very, it's very obvious, it's very clear there's a lot of ego, there's a lot of not wanting to share our own I don't know. Yeah, failures, complications, something that went wrong, I mean, it's easier to share some spectacular cases, that's for sure. However, it's a question of being very intellectually honest with peers.

Speaker 2: 9:02

It's a real problem in healthcare, hasn't it? Have you read the book Black Box Sinking by Matthew Saye?

Speaker 2: 9:07

No, but I will oh it's a fantastic book and it's all about failure and it compares different industries and how they address failure and it looks in particular at airlines, who have a completely different approach to failure that we do in healthcare, where it is very publicly discussed, everyone learns from it, it's a very open forum, but, as you say, in healthcare it seems to be buried and hidden away and I think it would be great if, moving forward in our profession, failure could be discussed more because certainly with implants it happens and often happens even though you've done everything seemingly right.

Speaker 3: 9:46

Yes, but I think that, christopher, this has been. This is a very valid point and I couldn't agree more. I must pay credit to Frank Renoir, who's from Paris, a very talented surgeon, and he was himself a helicopter pilot and he has wrote books. He has written books and he also has published many papers on failures in dentistry, taking it from the medical field and from the aviation. So it goes from the aviation to the medical, to the dental, and I agree with you, it's still not spoken about.

Speaker 3: 10:22

We had a brilliant session recently at the osteology meeting in Barcelona this few months ago, and we had a whole session only on errors and mistakes but not necessarily clinical mistakes where things went, didn't go as expected, because the drill wasn't working well or because the implant was not the right implant. Far from this understanding why things do not work, is it because our brain doesn't work? Is it because our eyes do not see specifically in that specific moment? I don't know the mild positioning of something. You know it's really understanding how the brain works and I found it very, very enlightening and interesting. But we really have to pay credit to him because he's the one who's spreading the word in our field.

Speaker 2: 11:16

Well, I say people have got to be brave about and change the way it is and probably actually our regulator needs to reconsider its position on some things as well, because I don't think they're always potentially as helpful as they could be in those fields. So your session is on the Thursday, the 9th of November. For anyone listening who's wondering what it is, the BACD conferences three days. Isabella is kindly presenting on the Thursday, which is our hands on session day. Further information can be found, obviously, at wwwbacdcom. If there's going to be one takeaway message, isabella, of the unique selling point, the key learning objective, what would you say it's going to be from your session?

Speaker 3: 12:03

There you go. Diagnostics, or the diagnostic phase, is the absolute, mandatory, number one, super duper important phase. We cannot avoid investing time, dedication, learning, especially now with all the digital technology. So the diagnostic phase is crucially important. And again, most importantly, there are no shortcuts in these kind of surgeries. We have to be humble, learn and work with every single very strict surgical protocol so that we don't make any mistakes.

Speaker 2: 12:43

Fantastic. And, of course, we have to give huge thanks to Geitschlich, who are supporting you at our event. Without their support, these things wouldn't be happening. Their products they're obviously something you use in your daily practice. Which one out of their product ranges your favorite?

Speaker 3: 12:59

Well, I've been using Geitschlich Bio Awesome Bio Guide for decades now and, frankly, the amount of research so as a clinician I'm not using a product, I don't have any conflict of interest because I have been testing and trying and even doing the research is many, many different substitutes, I must say the solidity of the scientific knowledge and background that Geitschlich provides is makes you use these products in a very, very safe way. So, yeah, I definitely use those on a regular basis.

Speaker 2: 13:42

I've got to say I personally really do enjoy using the BIOS Collagen blocks. I just find the handling of it fantastic. I mean, I use that more now than I do the granules personally. I just find I get really good predictable results with it. Particularly if I mix it up with some of the host bone as well, it gives it gives nice results. So they are products that I also use and support myself, and I'm not being paid to say that Fantastic. So well, what I would say is thank you so much for the introduction to your session, thank you for your time this evening to give out our listeners a heads up on what they can expect. And can I finalize by saying great minds obviously think alike, because we use similar biomaterials, and I can't help but notice you look to be sat in sort of a fairly darkish greeny room with a bookshelf and some books behind you there, and here I am with a very similar setup myself. So all I need now is the CV to back it all up.

Speaker 3: 14:44

And I'm. All you need now is a wonderful plate of spaghetti.

Speaker 2: 14:48

Oh, can I come around to yours?

Speaker 3: 14:50

Absolutely. Fly over and I'll cook for you.

Speaker 2: 14:53

Fantastic. Well, I say for anyone who wants to come to see Isabella, do log on to wwwbacdcom. It is Thursday, the 9th of November, and it is a lovely venue, the IET in London, just right by Waterloo Station, stunning, stunning venue. And of course we'll be having the gala dinner and I'm sure it will be a great success. So thanks again to Geitschwick, thank you to Isabella for her time and we will see you in November.