I respect everyone's opinion on this petition, including my fellow colleague Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons.  I understand that OMFS lead a fight back in 2000/2001 so that single-degree OMFS can perform Cosmetic Facial Surgery in VA as long as they had the knowledge, training, and experience.  The leaders in this battle were a group of OMFS in Richmond.  One of those leaders, Dr. Joseph Niamtu, commented on this petition.  This practice used many of their own resources to correct an injustice.  The injustice manifested in the fact that competing head and neck surgical specialties tried to prevent OMFS from performing Cosmetic Facial Surgery.  The competing specialties lost the battle, and rightly so.  No one spends more time operating in the head and neck as a specialty, than OMFS.  How can you tell a surgeon who can put a whole face back together that they cannot inject Botox and Fillers?

A similar theme rings true here.

The reality is that no one injects more needles into someone's face than the dental community of general dentists and dental specialists.  If dentists an learn how to do V2 and V3 Blocks, they can certainly safely learn how to perform Botox and Filler Injections (with much smaller needles).  In addition--no one spends more time learning about Head and Neck Anatomy in school than the dental community.  Nurse injectors have become commonplace in basically all facial plastic surgery practices.  Correct me if I am wrong, but I am not aware of any nurse who sit for written and clinical examinations on Head and Neck Anatomy.

In conclusion, I am in agreement with Joseph Niamtu III, DMD and all of the OMFS and others in the dental community who have supported cosmetically trained OMFS performing this important subset of our surgical specialty.  General Dentists who want to learn how to safely inject Botox and Fillers should certainly be permitted to do so.