Dr. Priya Desai, DDS, MSD

A meaningful share of consultations at Priya Desai’s practice end without a surgical plan, which is an odd outcome for a surgical specialty and an intentional one.

Desai leans hard on non-surgical therapy and re-evaluation, and she caps her caseload so that re-evaluation appointments never get squeezed by new consults. Referred patients receive a written explanation of why surgery is or is not being recommended — addressed to the patient, not to the referring dentist, a detail she considers the whole point.

She maintains a peri-implantitis registry shared with two nearby residency programs, and she declines to place implants she has not been given the option to maintain. “If I only see it once,” she says, “I have not treated anything. I have installed something.”