Picture caption: Chris Cumming, BDS, PhD, DMD,
F.D.S.R.C.S
A dental surgeon who once counted Bill and Hilary Clinton among
his friends and the Saudi royal family among his patients has
joined a Shrewsbury dental practice after working in the US for
more than twenty years and returning to the UK last year.
Chris Cumming was born near Liverpool and raised in Edinburgh
where he started at the University in the same year as Gordon Brown
and Charles Kennedy, sharing their interest in politics whilst
training at the Edinburgh Dental School. He has joined The Dental
Spa on Shrewsbury's Oxon Business Park, specialising in cosmetic
and general dentistry with a particular interest in removable
prosthetics.
Mr Cumming, who gained a PhD in Microbiology at the University
of Edinburgh, became a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in
1980. In 1989 he moved to the US to head up the departments of Oral
Medicine and Emergency & Diagnostic Dentistry at the University
of Pennsylvania.
The author of more than 100 papers on dentistry he gave more
than 100 talks worldwide on the subject. After leaving the
University of Pennsylvania he became Chairman, full Professor and
Associate Dean at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, where he
developed a number of training programmes including one in oral
medicine which was the first of its kind in the country. In 2002 he
moved across the river to the University of Kansas Medical School
where he built up a purpose-designed practice from scratch to an
ultimate 20,000 stable patients.
Whilst in the US, Mr Cumming owned a ranch in Kansas with his
wife, breeding both horses and cattle. In his 30's he says he ran
more marathons than he cares to remember; in his 40s he became a
keen sailor, sailing from New York to Miami and back several times
and also to the Bahamas. He was also involved in charity work,
making annual trips to Guatemala to treat Mayan Indians and working
closely with the Sioux Nation Indian tribes, doing dentistry work
on reservations in South Dakota and Nebraska.
Speaking about his move to Shrewsbury Mr Cumming said: "I have
never before been to Shropshire but, weather aside, I am loving it
already. As soon as I saw the practice I was impressed with the
standard of work and high quality of equipment and materials used -
both of which are without doubt on a par with the best in the US. I
am now looking forward to growing my patient base and am keen to
build up the oral medicine and oral surgery side of the
practice."