A Whole Day on Children's Teeth
On Sunday, September 28, 2025, the PDA San Pablo City Chapter held its 2nd Scientific Seminar, titled K Saya-Saya! Pediatric Dentistry, at Auravel Grande Hotel and Resort on Maharlika Highway, San Pablo City. The program ran from 7:00 AM to 5:30 PM, with five lectures and two workshops, and the Professional Regulation Commission credited it with 6 CPD points.
The title is a play on words that ran through the whole program: each lecture carried a K-word, and together they spelled out what a dentist meets when a child is in the chair. Registration opened August 11, with a member rate and a non-member rate, and closed September 21.
The Five Lectures
K-Sakit! Dental Pain in Children: Clinical Recognition, Management and Prevention by Dr. Maria Liza C. Centeno. How to read the different kinds of pain a child presents with, tell odontogenic from non-odontogenic sources through a structured assessment, and choose analgesics and antibiotics by current evidence-based guidelines.
K-Paga! Clinical and Biological Parameters of Odontogenic Infection and Management in Pediatric Patients by Dr. Jasper L. Tago. The biology of odontogenic infections in children, how they spread, the signs that decide urgency (fever, swelling, trismus, lymphadenopathy), and the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry protocols from a localised abscess to a facial space infection, including when to refer and hospitalise.
K-Langan! Treatment Planning in Pediatric Dentistry by Dr. Germilyn Krizza Chua Go. A full treatment-planning sequence: medical and dental history, clinical and radiographic examination, caries risk and behaviour assessment, then prioritising emergency care, prevention, surgical, restorative and orthodontic needs, with a section on informed consent from the parent.
K-Takot! The Emergency Pediatric Dental Visit by Dr. Manuel V. Vallesteros. Starting from the 2018 National Health Survey finding that 42 percent of Filipinos had never seen a dentist, the lecture dealt with the frightened child and the demanding parent who arrive together on an emergency, and the behaviour guidance that turns a bad first visit into a manageable one.
K-Galing! Clear and Present Guidelines in Prescription Writing for Children by Dr. Fina G. Lopez. Antimicrobial stewardship for dentists: what, how and when to prescribe, with the WHO's projection of 10 million deaths a year from antimicrobial resistance by 2050 as the reason to get it right. The lecture included a short workshop on computing and writing paediatric doses of antibiotics and analgesics.
Why Pediatric Dentistry, and Why a Whole Day
Most children in the Philippines are treated by general practitioners, not paediatric specialists, and most of the difficult moments in a general clinic involve a child: the toothache that has been going on for a week, the swelling that appeared overnight, the parent who wants an antibiotic. A day built around exactly those moments, with the dosing arithmetic done on paper in a workshop, is continuing education a general dentist can use the next morning.
It also shows how a chapter seminar is put together. The program was announced on the chapter's page on August 11, with the five lecture abstracts posted as cards over the following weeks, refunds handled by the treasurer by email, and 6 CPD points filed with the PRC.
The chapter's next seminar under the same name, the 2nd Scientific Seminar and General Membership Meeting of the 2026 to 2027 year, is on October 29, 2026 at CDC 1028 Café. Details here.
Sources: PDA San Pablo City Chapter Official, Auravel Grande Hotel and Resort.