13th Biennial National Orthodontic Congress

By Dr. Dennis C. Lim (Chairperson, 13th congress)

The Association of Philippine Orthodontists conducted an online seminar last August 1-2, 2022 for its 13th  Biennial National Orthodontic Congress with the theme “Orthodontic Resiliency: Coping with Crisis”. The conference was well attended with 300 registered attendees enjoying the orthodontic lectures from four esteemed speakers. On August 1, 2022, Dr Peter Ngan from West Virginia, USA discussed orthopedic management for growing children with the topic “40 years of Dentofacial Orthopedics, Where are we going from here?” Dr. Ngan shared with all the attendees the importance of managing patients with skeletal disharmony in all three dimensions with the help of the temporary skeletal anchorage devices. The attendees were given different options in managing young and growing patients.

The second speaker for the day was  Dr. Kai Woh Loh from Singapore, who discussed orthodontic treatment using aligners with the topic title “Managing Orthodontic Treatment during the Covid-19 Pandemic.” Dr. Loh presented several cases treated perfectly with aligner therapy. He was able to impart to all the attendees the concept of aligner therapy and how the aligners can move teeth to their desired position.

On the second day of the conference, August 2nd, 2022, the first speaker was Dr. Chris Chang from Taiwan, who shared his expertise on self-ligating bracket systems as well as the use of bone screws to help manage very difficult cases. Dr. Chang presented the topic on “Maximizing Self-Ligation Mechanics for Challenging Cases,” wherein he showed some severe malocclusions that should be treated with orthognathic surgery, but was able to treat them with self-ligating bracket in combination with bone screws.

And for our last speaker, we have our very own past president of the Association of Philippine Orthodontists, Dr. Cynthia P. Quismundo, who shared her experience and expertise on treating different malocclusion with the title “Troubleshooting in Orthodontics.” Dr. Quismundo was able to capture the audience with her different orthodontic cases and how she manages them. After each lecture, attendees were able to interact with all the speakers during an open forum and post test questions. Evaluations showed that all the attendees provided almost excellent ratings in the evaluation of all our distinguished foreign and local speakers. All the attendees were very appreciative of the unselfish sharing of knowledge from the speakers.