For the first time in the Greater New York Dental Meeting’s 79-year history, participants attending the 2003 meeting had access to a live, interactive dental videoconference, courtesy of an NYUCD program featuring an implant procedure performed and broadcast live from the Rosenthal Institute for Aesthetic Dentistry to the Javits Center, site of the GNYDM, one of the largest annual dental congresses in the world.

The three-hour, continuing education program, entitled “Critical Factors in Implant Esthetics and Ridge Preservation,” showed Dr. Nicholas Elian, Clinical Assistant Professor of Implant Dentistry and Director of the Implant Dentistry Program, using the Rosenthal Institute facilities to perform an implant overdenture procedure on a patient, while Dr. Dennis P. Tarnow, Professor and Chairman of the Ashman Department of Implant Dentistry, simultaneously narrated the program from the Javits Center.

The program was offered free of charge to NYUCD alumni donors. Immediately following the live videoconference, alumni donors were invited to be Dean Alfano’s guests at a special luncheon featuring remarks by former First Lady Barbara Bush.

“Since I assumed the deanship in 1998,” said Dean Alfano, “alumni contributions to the College have more than doubled. Inviting alumni donors to the videoconference and luncheon as my guests enabled me to say ‘thank you’ for their steadfast support which has propelled NYUCD’s great progress over the past several years.

“Special thanks are due to GNYDM Executive Director Dr. Howard Lieb for helping to make the videoconference possible, and to both the Colgate-Palmolive Company and Henry Schein, Inc., for enabling NYUCD to cosponsor the Barbara Bush Celebrity Luncheon.”