Health care was a way of life for Solon Kao long before people started calling him “doctor.” Growing up in Taiwan as the son of two physicians left little doubt as to what he would do with his life.
“Both of my parents are pediatricians,” says Dr. Kao, a new faculty member in the School of Dentistry. “All I’ve ever known is health care.”
But he admits that his life’s path wasn’t always clear. He studied biomedical engineering at Vanderbilt University only to avoid the foreign-language requirement of a liberal arts degree.
“I already knew a foreign language,” laughs Dr. Kao, who moved to the United States with his family as a teen.
It was at his next destination—the University of Tennessee School of Dentistry—that Dr. Kao discovered a love for oral surgery. “I think it was the scope of practice that attracted me to surgery,” he says. “In this field, you get to see the fruits of what you do. Something is broken and you get to put it back together—to make something happen. Failure is not an option.”
A residency in oral and maxillofacial surgery at Louisiana State University further cemented his love for the field and for the southeastern United States. In 2002, he began an oral surgery residency at MCG.
“I’ve always been comfortable in the Southeast,” Dr. Kao says. “I didn’t really know of Augusta then, but I knew I wanted to stay in this area.”
During his MCG residency, he began tutoring dental students in his spare time and found that he loved it. “When I was a student, I remember having awful teachers,” he says. “They always made things so complicated. All I needed them to do was to interpret complicated concepts in a simple way.”
He promptly chose academia as a career path so could combine dentistry with teaching and research.
“At first, I was just helping students, and then I got to make several presentations about topics I was studying,” Dr. Kao says. “There’s just something about making a presentation. The people listening think that you are the expert and you just feel good.”
All of his hard work paid off. Dr. Kao joined the School of Dentistry faculty as an assistant professor of oral and maxillofacial surgery after finishing his residency. His new job is a perfect mix, he says, allowing him to practice oral and maxillofacial surgery and teach at the same time.
Dr.
Kao also offers a special service to MCG dental patients. He is the only dentist
at MCG and one of the few in the area practicing a technique—alveolar
distraction osteogenesis—that helps new bone grow in the gums. Using a patient’s
own bone as a foundation helps stabilize an implant, he says.
Used mostly in trauma patients, distraction osteogenesis uses an elevator-like device placed in the gums where bone has been lost. There must be enough existing bone to secure the device.
A portion of the appliance is left outside the gums and the patient turns it so many rotations per day, which raises the top portion of the appliance and leaves a space between it and existing bone. The procedure creates an artificial trauma in the existing bone and forces it to heal itself by regeneration. The additional bone provides a large enough base for dental implants.
This procedure, still relatively new to the field, also allows dentists to better estimate timelines for recovery.
“The timing is more predictable because I know when a patient has turned the appliance for so long, there is enough bone there to put the implant in,” Dr. Kao says. “It also allows me to do the procedure in the office instead of going to the operating room to take a bone graft from a patient’s skull, jaw or hip.”
Because there is only one surgical site, the procedure is often less painful than a bone graft, he says.
Outside of providing patients with a better prognosis after oral surgery, Dr. Kao enjoys a wide variety of things. His hobbies include customizing car stereos, windsurfing and playing classical piano. One of his performances was featured on National Public Radio. But teaching provides his greatest satisfaction.
“The positive feedback I get from students makes this job great,” he says.
Jennifer Hilliard