life with dental implants

Never take your smile for granted

Two scenarios:

1. You are standing in front of a room full of high school students teaching English or Spanish. Your dentures are moving and you are uncomfortable.

2. You are broadcasting at a hockey game. Your wife listening at home can hear your partials clicking while you are struggling to speak clearly into the microphone.

Both Mary Johnson of LaMoure, N.D., and Bernie Burggraf of Fargo lived with dental problems and the discomfort and embarrassment of not always knowing what would happen when they opened their mouths.

All of Johnson’s teeth were pulled and she was wearing dentures by the time she was 21. She inherited a condition that causes weak enamel. By the time she visited Ryan Nelson, DDS, of Lisbon Smiles, she was wearing her fourth set of dentures. Nelson recommended she see Michael Noffze, DDS, MD, at the Facial and Oral Surgery Center in Fargo.

Noffze told her the pressure of dentures on her jaw made her jawbones resorb. He took bone from her hip to repair her upper jaw. Noffze placed implants into both her top and bottom jaws. By June 13, 2012, she had her smile back.

BY KATHERINE TWEED // MIKE SMITH PHOTOGRAPHY

“Just to have a smile – the smile they created – I will never take it for granted,” Johnson said. One of her grandchildren said, “Oh, gramma, you have teeth.”

Her three daughters and her grandchildren all have the same weak enamel. One of her daughters had cavities before her teeth emerged. Now retired from classroom teaching, she confidently works educating adults. Johnson recently took her certified nurse assistant test so she can volunteer with Hospice.

“When you’re concerned about your smile, it puts a damper on everything. The more I know about dental implants and Dr. Noffze’s work, the more impressed I am. The technology can really improve the quality of life,” Johnson said.

All work at the Facial and Oral Surgery Center is elective. In Johnson’s case, Noffze was able to help her obtain insurance coverage. Bernie Burggraf is well known in the hockey community throughout the region. Player, coach, father and grandfather of hockey players, and both a color and play-by-play radio announcer, Burggraf was injured in car accidents. His dentist at the time gave him partial dentures.

When his wife, vivian, could hear his partial moving during a broadcast, she began doing research on what to do. “I thought I would swallow my one partial the way it was flying around in my mouth. You try to cover up but she could hear it,” Burggraf said.

“Now I can eat with freedom and have complete confidence. I can laugh and my teeth stay where they are supposed to,” he added. “And, now I can whistle.”

Both Johnson and Burggraf came to Noffze after years of problems and discomfort. Both would go through the process again in a minute – except now they do not need more work.

They feel set for life, real living.

The professional, low-key manner in which Noffze and his staff worked with them and their families made both of them happy.

Noffze “has the credentials,” Burggraf said. Noffze earned his DDS from Indiana University, and then studied at Mayo Clinic for six years, earning his MD in 2007.

“I moved to Fargo to start my private practice and began July 1, 2008. I do elective and personal work. I like the independence,” Noffze said.

Noffze specializes in dental implants but does other facial surgical procedures. He makes the implant “as natural as we can give people right away.” He does not take traditional impressions, instead using a digital scanning device as well as 3D radiographs. His practice – except for a staff he depends on for warm professionalism – is nearly 100 percent electronic, from equipment through medical records.

He shares his dedication to the effective use of technology nationally. Noffze is a presenter in the Speaker’s Consortium with Straumann, the largest dental implant company in the world.

As director of the Heartland Study Club for dentists, he arranges monthly sessions for about 50 dentists from North and South Dakota, and Minnesota. They earn continuing education credits from experts in everything from infection control to CPR. Noffze earns more than 100 CEUs a year.

While he has his own surgical suite, he holds professional privileges at both Essentia Health and Sanford Health. His surgical suite has the most up-to-date and best instruments and equipment. A feature that makes people smile is the huge, stainless steel Craftsman cart.

Smiles are consistent in Noffze’s work.

What makes him smile? “The OR and a plane’s cockpit are my two favorite places to be,” he said.

Then the phone rings, and the UGGshoe wearing dentist is off to care for another patient, smiling. [AWM]