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During the delivery of the 2016 Oral Health Awards, the dental doctor João Caramês was honored with the Figure Award of the Year in the Implantology Area. We wanted to know what the achievement of the trophy represents and what projects for the future.

What does it represent for you to win the Figure of the Year Award in the Implantology Area?

A great honor, satisfaction and how I could express at the moment of receiving the prize, a recognition that I symbolically share with all my team. Throughout my career I have had the privilege of collecting some prizes of clinical and academic merit. I never felt better doctor or teacher for every prize I earned. Nevertheless, they were all a stimulus in order to live up to all that is expected of me.

How has your career been in dentistry and why did you choose this area?

My course in Dentistry is marked by several important moments. As a student and guest assistant at FMDUL, at the beginning of his academic career, I would like to recall his experience with Professor Simões dos Santos. A ‘master’ and pedagogue who, by virtue of his requirement, virtuosity and humanism in the profession, marked my indelible way of being in the Dental Medicine.

Years later, experience in the United States and the privilege of contacting teachers such as Dennis Tarnow, Gary Greenstein, Stuart Froum, or Leonard Linkow at NYU were instrumental in opening up new horizons to date. This period allowed me to develop a culture of excellence in the clinical practice of oral rehabilitation and to stimulate a degree of scientific update that until today accompanies me and I try to transmit to the students.

At the clinical level, it would highlight two moments: the creation of the Institute of Implantology in 1996 and the present moment in which we are about to celebrate 20 years of its existence. We are a clinic that, maintaining the uniqueness of its physical space, knew how to grow and consolidate during this period, without the voracity or temptation to branch through multiple spaces. I am extremely proud of the course, the differentiated clinical team created, and I understand that only this principle of centralization allows a total control of the quality of the treatments provided, not only in the area of ​​Oral Rehabilitation and Implantology, but in all other areas of Medicine Tooth. Fortunately, I still have access to all the patients who daily ask for my help for extensive and complex oral rehabilitation or for the resolution of post-rehabilitation complications with implants.

The thousands of patients who shared with me the satisfaction of a ‘new smile’, a better health and almost always, a higher self-esteem, are the best reason to have chosen this profession.