Letter From Dear Doctor

Issue 8 of Dear Doctor Magazine

"For those who went before us, we stand on your shoulders"

These were the opening lines of our first issue of Dear Doctor, for without the influence of great teachers and mentors one's life work sometimes does not go further than a dream.

In this issue we inaugurate our new "Patient Care" section in which we look at how the uniqueness of the Doctor/Patient relationship plays out in partnerships to plan and manage treatment. We explore from both your perspective as a patient, and ours as doctors to produce the healthiest and most beautiful results possible.

Our "Patient Care" Section is dedicated to the life's work of our mentors Drs. Morton Amsterdam and D. Walter Cohen. It is hard to describe in words the contribution of these giants not only to dentistry but to life. There are not many people who live to become legends in their own life times, preceptors in their fields, great teachers, mentors, and not least of all valued friends.

Intuition, "the special ability to sense or know immediately without reasoning" was the guiding light that led this famed partnership of Dr. Morton Amsterdam and D. Walter Cohen to conceptualize and develop treatment regimes for the management of advanced dental disease far ahead of their time. Many of their concepts have been scientifically and clinically validated over the ensuing decades and are the basis for today's treatment norms. They inspired and created arguably one of the greatest and most respected postgraduate programs in the world, in the fields of periodontics and periodontal prosthesis (advanced restorative dentistry).

These great men gave so much more, this is just a part of their legacy. They imparted too, an understanding of what it truly means to be a doctor and healer in an imperfect world. As their mentors gave to them, their charge was to "give back" to their students, which we believe to this day is their greatest joy.

Their footprints can be felt throughout the pages of Dear Doctor Magazine. The seeds they have sown in their students have borne fruit throughout the world, in the generations of teachers, researchers and immensely gifted and talented clinicians, who are in turn today's teachers and mentors.

We dedicate this issue of the magazine to Dr. Morton Amsterdam and D. Walter Cohen who epitomize mastery in excellence in multidisciplinary case management which we will showcase in our future issues.

Our profound thanks once again,