Meet Dr. Mehrdad Emami

As I entered into my ... After high school and college and I came to this country, long, many years ago. When I ... It was about 1978 when I came to this country and I always wanted to seek and follow the profession in medical field, and as far as that goes, because of my age, I didn't want to do 20, 30 years of studies, so I thought dentistry could make it happen, due to the fact that I could use my skills. I wanted to work with my hands, and I wanted to do surgery, and I wanted to have patient contact, and so on and so forth. So I thought dentistry would be the best field for me, and I loved artistic, you know, the skills that I had, to be utilized in that fashion. So I picked the field of dentistry, and it's been amazing.

Another great thing about dentistry is that we are dealing with people who are really not that sick or ill, so you can have much better contact or connection with them, and have a great time with them. Not that I don't like to serve others, but this makes it more comfortable in a way, to reach people and be able to address other issues in their lives, and that's the best thing I've done.

It's a great time in my life. I've been doing this about 25 plus years. When Justin decided to come and practice with us, and my wife's always been helping me since the beginning. Actually, Dr. Justin used to answer the phone when he was little. Actually, he was six or seven years old. Let me tell you this story. He got a call from a patient, emergency patient after hour. He answered my phone. The patient goes, “Is your dad home? Where is Dr. Emami?“ He passes the phone on. She was telling me her conversation with Justin at that young age when she came to the office, and was very funny. He started very young to be in the dental practice. When he decided to come, it was great. It's fun in the beginning, really. My wife, been helpful so much with my success. She has education, degree plus business degree.

She was very helpful to help the foundation of the business aspects, because I didn't know anything about it. She helped me to. Justin decided to go to dental school. I never pushed or say, “You have to do this,“ and so on. But God trained him that way and directed him that way. I'm very thankful. After he joined us, really changed our life. They say after 20 you get to a plateau in your practice. You're comfortable, you don't need to do anything else. You've got the plane up on the level altitude, you want to just ride smooth ride. He joined, and I had to go and do a big jump with him and big bump up due to the fact that we had two practices. One was a little older, one was new. We had to renovate, just move to a new location where we are right now. He really ignited a new ... Start new rejuvenation in a way of the whole thing. He's very smart.

He's doing a very great job. I'm doing less and less of certain things, and more and more of other things. I'm trying to give him what he likes to do. He's doing all aspects of dentistry very well. Definitely, IV sedation, and oral surgery, and all the surgical aspects, implants, sleep apnea, orthodontics, all of that. He's really taken a good hold of it and good control. I love the preventative stuff and other aspects of dentistry that everybody needs everyday. We have the good balance right now between both of us. Both practices get a good part of us. He works in both offices, and I do the same. It's just been amazing. I'm so thankful. It's not by plan, it's been the will of the Lord. Whatever God wanted, this is what happened.

picked Tulsa because I ... this is the first place that I entered into United States. I came here 1978 to Tulsa International Airport, the largest, biggest, best airport in the country. Have you seen it? Right? You guys seen it.

I entered here 1978, and I went to high school here, and I went to Oral Roberts University. So there's a lot of connection with memories, and my memories in United States and beginning of my life here in this country, and I'm very thankful. That's the very big reason.

And also, I met my wife at Oral Roberts University, and she was expressing after we got married that Tulsa in the place to raise the kids. We wanted to go to a bigger town, and so on and so forth, but definitely what grabbed us was how the future holds for our children, and we wanted a family kind of an atmosphere, somewhere that the kids are not distracted too much with different crazy things, and this is the greatest town. And definitely when you have friends and family around after 20, 30 years, living in town, you feel more acceptable, accepted, I should say, in the city. So you're more accepted in the city, or you feel like you're wanted, too. People want you to be here.

So we had a lot of people wanted us to stay, families that we knew. And that was a good start for us, and of course, kids grow and they did what I did almost, and they continued.

When I started practicing, it was pretty much restorative dentistry and preventative dentistry. As I evolved, I asked myself, “What is our vision and mission long term?“ We came up with the title Total Health Starts with Your Smile. We came up with that, and then I'm like, “Okay, total health ... I'm not doing anything beside restorative and preventative,“ so when Justin got involved, we added more aspects, other aspects of dentistry and specialties like orthodontics, oral surgery, and definitely sleep apnea. Definitely sometimes we reach out people who are nutrition and vitamins, stuff that really is deficient in our system of our patient's diet. Those are the things that we try to focus on and try to find out the underlying problems of what's causing the issues for our patients. If we don't have the answer, we definitely get it for them or direct them to it.

But, definitely we look at the overall aspects because, again, it's about relationships. It is about reducing their stress with IV sedation. All of that, IV sedation, with sleep apnea, all of that combine. We keep looking at different aspects of how we can make patients better. See, when you do IV sedation, you have to do a health assessment. When you do a health assessment, you take blood pressures, you do all that. You kind of know where your patient stands as far as health and if you think they need to get healthier, that's the point. We are diagnosing, we are trying to help them if we can, or refer them to their medical personnel.

Restorative dentistry and restoring teeth, of course, been around for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Everyone's done it. In Egypt from the Pharaoh time, they used gold and they restored teeth. You see it on the skulls that you see from many, many years ago. The ancient history is there for restorative dentistry, restoring teeth. The key with restorative right now is if you prevent, of course, we will have less damage to the teeth, but after damage or some cavities or some destruction has happened, we use tooth color fillings to definitely restore if they are minimal destruction to the tooth. But if they are larger, definitely we go more crowning the tooth or protecting the tooth from all surrounding. That is been the greatest thing when we talked about affording, having the same day restorations. All of these are same day restoration and all of them are tooth color. They are not that black and blue colors we see in our mouth. I had some of them when I was a child.

They still, some dentists will use amalgam and similar fillings, but definitely we try to eliminate them because they're causing a lot of damage to the teeth long run. The beginning, they're fine. As they expand, the cause fracture. After your placement, they cause fracture the teeth and also leakage after they rust and corrode in the mouth. So, you see a lot of that is being damaging teeth. So, we restore those. Removing the amalgam because of the mercury. Of course, a lot of people don't like the mercury and metals anymore. There are doctors who just take them all out no matter what. I, personally, go with see the damage, how big it is, how large it is, but you really want to eliminate it as much as possible. Of course, we go back to old times. We do partials, dentures, if necessary, but right now, dental implants is really the standard of care. We provide it and also we inform the patients. We really try to help them to see it. They understand it. Not educate them. Everyone's educated. Everyone's got a Facebook and a Google, so everybody knows about these great things in dentistry, but we try to offer it and try to inform them so they can pick and do the best they can for their own mouth.

As far as our practice, one of the most important part of our practice is preventative area. We have a great hygiene program. When patients call for cleaning, definitely they do not know their condition, so when they come in, we really assess, analyze everything about their gum issue, plus their teeth, of course, but I want to emphasize on the preventative.

In any society, at least 50 to 60% or more have gum disease and if you include gingivitis, which everybody knows the word, gingivitis, bleeding gums. It's just the beginning of their problem, which is bigger and worse and needs a lot more preventive, a lot more maintenance is that gum disease called periodontal disease or pyuria, some people know that and that's the foundation of the teeth, which is bone and gums. They deteriorate and the teeth get loose and then you have lose of teeth.

Long story short is, we try to do our best to prevent that to happen. We can prevent teeth to get from cavities, you crown them, you fill them, whatever you can do to restore them, but gums are so important and many people, they don't know and really periodontal disease do not have any symptoms.

The symptoms are very, very painless in a way, sometimes and they're little bleeding and sometimes, of course, they don't show themselves so aggressive then suddenly you have pus and you have bleeding and some people really don't have much pain beside the smell or they smell their breath or somebody smells their breath with halitosis we call it and that's how they come to the dentist. They go, “Hey, somebody's telling me or my wife or husband tell me I have bad breath.“

Those are the things that we really focus on to make sure we diagnosis these early on and do some preventative modes for that because there's always implants, of course. There's always dentures, but we really don't want them to go there if we can prevent it.

That's one of my really passion recently. I know it's the most basic and sounds so routine for everyone, floss, brush, do this and that, but that's something that our generation needs to be reminded all the time and it's been neglected by the young and the old, so we really take a lot of pride and take our time and we have many ways to prevent. There's solutions we give to the patient, mouthwashes or toothpaste, different special stuff and special medication that can help them to prevent their gum disease.

Well definitely our slogan, or our way of life at Galleria of Smiles is patients are first, and we really pay very, very close attention to detail. I mean, it's to the point that sometimes we are like, “Really? Are we really paying attention to something that's so not important or it's so small,“ but everyone thinks it's just too much micromanaging the system. But we really micromanage our patient services, as far as the way they enter, the way they are received, the way we call, the way they call, or if they call our we immediately taking care of the responding to their calls. I'm very thankful to say we really find every part of our being, every person that works at Galleria of Smiles, is paying attention towards all those details to reach them, to touch them, and go on.