View and Download a PDF of FFOFR’s 2012 Progress Report »

Your generous support has enabled us to have a very productive first year and we have been able to accomplish many of our objectives. As you may recall, the objectives of the foundation are to:

  • Provide free online programs of education in Prosthodontics
  • Develop outreach programs devoted to rehabilitation of patients with congenital and acquired defects of the head and neck.
  • Support research in the field of Maxillofacial Rehabilitation
  • Support the predoctoral and residency programs of the Division of Advanced Prosthodontics, UCLA

During the first year we have concentrated primarily on the first two objectives. Our online lecture series has been a great success. We began posting lectures on the website (ffofr.org) last summer. Lectures were developed and posted in four categories, complete dentures, removable partial dentures, implant dentistry, and maxillofacial prosthetics.

  • Complete dentures (33 lectures posted)
  • Removable partial dentures (13 lectures posted)
  • Implant dentistry (17 lectures posted)
  • Maxillofacial prosthetics (24 lectures posted)
FFOFR Website Statistics

The numbers of individuals accessing the site has steadily increased during the last 6 months. During the third week of January the number of user approached 2000 per week and continues to edge steadily higher. We are deeply indebted to Quintessence Publishing Co. for posting an advertisement announcing our free online course offerings in their November issue of the International Journal of Prosthodontics. Since that posting our site has continued to grow at a comfortable rate. Forty per cent of our users are based in the United States and the rest are international. Members of the Prosthodontic faculty from Nanjing Medical University and the Fourth Military Medical University have just completed translating 18 of these lectures into Chinese (all 13 devoted to Removable Partial Dentures and 5 devoted to Implant Dentistry) and as a result, we anticipate a substantial increase in interest in our site from Chinese practitioners.

We plan to eventually translate all of our lectures into Chinese. Dr. William Pagan has translated 30 of the lectures devoted to complete dentures into Spanish and we will post these in the near future.

We have expanded our list of faculty contributors and are pleased to announce that we have commitments from several well known international lecturers in the field of Prosthodontics and Implant Dentistry to provide additional lectures for the site. They include Ken Malament, Clark Stanford, Ed McLaren, Robert Faulkner and Alan Carr. Our goal is to provide a complete repertoire of free online lectures in Prosthodontics to our users.

Our first outreach program was conducted in Mumbai, India at Tata Memorial Hospital, November 26-29, 2012. Tata Memorial Hospital and Medical Center is exclusively devoted to the care of patients with cancer and they have the largest census of oral cancer patients in the world. India has a very high rate of oral cancer and so the need to train Maxillofacial Prosthodontists is great. The FFOFR team was composed of John Beumer, UCLA, Arun Sharma, (UCSF), Jim Kelly (UCLA), Kumar Shah (UCLA), Ryan Wallace (UCLA) and Don Prodroche (UCLA). The program consisted of four days of lectures, live clinical and laboratory demonstrations. Dr. Wallace conducted clinical demonstrations of the techniques used to make master impressions for a maxillary obturator prostheses and Dr. Beumer demonstrated the sculpting of an orbital prosthesis, via closed circuit television. Mr. Don Pedroche demonstrated a number of laboratory techniques used in Maxillofacial Prosthetics for the course participants. In addition a poster competition was conducted and Dr. Kelly and Dr. Wallace acted as judges for the 40 posters presented by the delegates.

More than 200 prosthodontists and general dentists from all over India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East attended the meeting. Dr. Kanchan Dholam and the faculty and staff of the Maxillofacial Prosthetic Clinic at Tata Memorial were charged with local arrangements and helped make the meeting a wonderful experience for all participants. Post conference evaluations from the participants were universally positive and plans are being made to hold a followup event in southern India in 2017.

Our next outreach program is planned for Southeast Asia in December of 2013. It will be devoted to Maxillofacial Prosthetics and will be conducted in cooperation with Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. The local arrangements chair is Dr. Pravej Serichetaphongse, Deputy Dean for Hospital Affairs and Quality Assurance, and Head of the Maxillofacial Prosthetics Unit at Chulalongkorn University (pravejs@hotmail.com).

We sincerely thank our sponsors and supporters for your wonderful support. Because of you, our first year has been very productive and a great success. We plan to continue our quest to upgrade the quality of Prosthodontic care internationally through our outreach activities and free online programs of instruction. We will be contacting you during the next several weeks to ask for your continued support for activities planned for the coming year.

Best regards,

John Beumer III, DDS, MS, President

Neil Garrett PhD, Treasurer

Ichiro Nishimura DDS, PhD, Secretary

Foundation for Oral Facial Rehabilitation (FFOFR)