out of Read Reviews for Dr. James Chen
Dr James Chen is a very cheerful and positive person and orthodontist. He likes to say that he treats his patients as family. Judging from the website he thinks very highly of himself and his 'long academic career', scientific interest and humanitarian mission to Guatemala.
Our family also experienced another side of Dr Chen. He was my son's orthodontist at the Orthodontics Department of UCSF from April 2012 until August 2013, after we came there for a second opinion. I found out about Dr Chen's current employment when I sent in a complaint to the California Dental Board concerning my son's treatment at UCSF.
In the spring of 2012 my son was 14 years old with two impacted canines. Both teeth had a curious resorption going on that had me very worried and that I kept asking about. I only got indulgent smiles from Dr Chen in response.
Dr Chen never wrote a comment on the resorption in my son's records as we discovered later. He never did a model of the teeth. He did not document results of tests or consultations with other professors, he never did a proper periapical of the canines.
We did do a CBCT, computer imaging of the teeth, that Dr Chen said was for the surgeon and, as we understood too late, Dr Chen was not competent in analyzing the images. The CBCT would have been a valuable tool in evaluating the resorption and what to do, but it was never analyzed even though it cost $ 388 and subjected my son to radiation.
After 5 months of trying to get the canines to emerge, my son had a second surgery. It turned out that that the surgeon, Dr Janice Lee, had not seen the CBCT that she ordered with Dr Chen, was unaware of the resorption and had obviously not even looked closely at the older panorama's or discussed my son's case with Dr Chen even though their departments were located in the same building.
In the summer of 2013, after reading orthodontic articles by an expert on impacted canines, I became aware of conditions like ICRR (invasive cervical root resorption) and PEIR (preeruptive intracorontal resorption). I emailed Dr Chen and first got no response. I emailed Dr Adrian Becker in Jerusalem, the author, and got immediate, very interested and thoughtful responses. Dr Chen eventually said that the information I forwarded him was 'pretty interesting', but he would have to 'familiarize' himself with the condition first.
Three weeks later we were driving home from summer vacation to make it to our son's orthodontic appointment the next day, hoping Dr Chen would have some answers for us, when Dr Chen cancelled the appointment by email because of 'restructuring of the clinic' and goes off to Guatemala and China.
You can read information on impacted canines and the full and ongoing story of my
son's ordeal with Orthodontics on a website I made: impactedcanine.weebly.com
Our experience with Dr Chen was very disappointing and in retrospect it is clear that he was very interested in furthering his career and resume, but not very caring or competent to our son as a patient.
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