Norman Trieger, DMD, MD 1929–2012

Abstract

Dentistry recently lost another great leader when Norman Trieger, DMD, MD, unexpectedly passed away on October 13, 2012, in Atlanta, Georgia. Norman was born in New York City in 1929. After completing high school, he graduated with a BA degree from Emory University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest academic honor society for the liberal arts and sciences in the United States. He then entered Harvard School of Dental Medicine and graduated in 1954 with awards from the American Academy of Dental Medicine and the American Society of Dentistry for Children. Dr Trieger subsequently completed his oral surgery residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, and after initially joining the oral surgery faculty at Harvard, he moved to the University of California, Los Angeles, where he was the founding chairman of the Division of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. Eventually he returned to the city of his birth to become Professor and Chairman of the Department of Dentistry and Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he also simultaneously earned his medical degree. Dr Trieger was a highly respected Diplomate of the American Board of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and a Fellow in General Anesthesia of the American Dental Society of Anesthesiology (ADSA).Dr Harcourt Stebbins was the ADSA's first editor, and published the Newsmonthly until Dr Bruce Douglas was appointed as the second editor in 1955. He advanced the Newsmonthly to become the Journal of the American Dental Society of Anesthesiology. During a sabbatical, Drs Jay Whisenand and Joseph Osterloh Jr served as editors. Dr Trieger was appointed editor in 1965, and in 1970 championed the approval of the journal's new name, Anesthesia Progress. Dr Trieger made significant improvements in Anesthesia Progress during his 18 years as editor and only gave up this duty to Dr Ray Dionne in 1983 when he was elected president of the ADSA. Dr Dionne, then Dr John Yagiela, and finally your current editor all have benefited immensely from the editorial insight and mentorship that Dr Trieger shared with us.Dr Trieger was a very level-headed, highly perceptive leader who could always see the big picture. He helped develop the original ADA guidelines for teaching intravenous moderate sedation in continuing education courses (60 didactic hours and 20 clinical cases) that have been demonstrated over 30 years to be a valid teaching standard for safety and efficacy. He taught many non–general anesthesia–trained dentists to safely administer a single-drug benzodiazepine intravenous moderate sedation technique using these guidelines. He published numerous scientific articles, including his modification of the Bender Motor Gestalt Test as a new and simple indicator of psychomotor recovery from sedation. The Trieger Test is a very simple connect-the-dots test that has been scientifically validated and has been used in hundreds of sedation and anesthesia research articles since 1970.In the late 1980s, when the ADSA's board of directors planned to submit to the American Dental Association an application for sponsoring the recognition of an anesthesia specialty in dentistry that would have grandfathered all current oral surgeons and 1-year trained ADSA Fellows in addition to the 2-year trained dentist anesthesiologists, Dr Trieger authored the formal application. However, the application was never submitted because of significant political opposition from a majority of ADSA members and nonmember specialists. Even after his retirement as an emeritus professor, Dr Trieger continued to attend ADSA meetings and remained actively involved in many other areas of his life. In fact, it was his attendance at the formal public apology by Emory University for their several decades of anti-Semitic discrimination at their now-defunct dental school that resulted in his accidental death. Being the absolute gentleman that I knew so well for so many years, Dr Trieger was helping the elderly wife of a colleague into a car when he slipped and fell in the street and suffered a severe intracranial hemorrhage. He was in a coma for 30 hours at Grady Memorial Hospital before he died. He leaves 13 grandchildren and 20 great-grandchildren. His wife, Terri, preceded him in death in 2009.Norman was a true friend, and I am proud that he considered me as a colleague. He was a superb teacher, scientist, author, and clinician. He set the gold standard for lifelong contributions to the ADSA, oral surgery, dental anesthesiology, and the entire profession of dentistry. When I close my eyes, I can still hear his voice of fairness and reason as he sat at the end of the table at the ADSA Board of Directors meetings. When Norman Trieger talked, everyone listened. He will be missed by everyone who knew him, and fortunately for us, he is one of those unforgettable persons in our lives whose memory will not fade.