By Becky O’Guin, CDA Director of Communications
From the 2024 Winter Journal of the Colorado Dental Association
Dr. Steven Combs retired from private practice eight years ago, but still manages to work several Fridays a month at local surgery centers treating refugee children. This is not new work. When he had a private practice in Nebraska, he would dedicate his Fridays off to taking care of migrant children whose families were in the area to work on farms. While his focus was general dentistry, there were no pediatric dentists in Nebraska when he graduated from dental school in 1981 so he filled that need until he retired in 2015.
After he retired, he and his wife moved to the Denver area, and he began working at Children’s Hospital Colorado and then with a surgery center associated with the Aurora Medical Center. Now, he works at a surgery center near I-225 and Mississippi Ave in Aurora and the Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children. All his clients are on Medicaid and are referred to him by refugee clinics. Because most of his patients are young and can be as young as 17 months old, and the amount of dental work needed is so extensive, they must go under general anesthesia, which is why Dr. Combs works in dental surgery centers. Last year, he saw about 110 kids. The refugees come to the Denver area from countries such as Burma, Afghanistan, Syria and the Congo. If the children are young and need full mouth reconstruction, they are referred to Dr. Combs. “I try to rebuild their teeth instead of remove them if I have a choice,” he said. He said the work is extremely rewarding. Many of the people he sees don’t speak English, but he is grateful that the refugee clinics have interpretation services. These children are in desperate need and although he does submit a bill to Medicaid, the reward is the happy parents because their children are no longer suffering. “The warm fuzzies you get from the parents are just amazing,” Dr. Combs said. They all are just very thankful and grateful.
While there is no solid answer as to why these children have so much decay, Dr. Combs said that it is probably due to poor diet and lack of access to toothpaste, toothbrushes and dental care. Many of his patients have spent considerable time in refugee camps where the food is soft and sustaining, but not necessarily good for their teeth.
“In Afghanistan, children don’t have access to dental care until they are 7 years old according to parents I’ve talked to from there,” Dr. Combs said. So, this all contributes to decay. In some third world countries dental care is not a priority. He said although some of the kids come in with horrendous decay down into the pulp chamber, they don’t have infection, so their immune systems are strong.
Dr. Combs doesn’t have an office, but he does have a dental assistant who helps with billing and scheduling. He says when she is done working, he will think about really retiring. He will be 70 years old in March. He said that a lot of his colleagues leave the U.S. for mission work, but he says he doesn’t leave the country because “there is plenty of mission work right here.”
“Dental practice can be hard, but I never once didn’t want to go to the operating room, never once had a bad experience and never once did not enjoy what I got to do!”