A master’s degree in orthodontics and a leading expert in dental aligners, Pedro Costa Monteiro has accumulated extensive experience and expertise in this field for over two decades. His continued commitment to knowledge and technology to offer patients the most cutting-edge treatments has also led him to innovate in his teaching, a field he is passionate about. In this interview, we highlight the Flying with Aligners course, the latest project that has taken this dentist “soaring” in orthodontic training with dental aligners.
“It’s a completely new way of teaching orthodontics with dental aligners. I started teaching orthodontics in 2012. Alongside university training, there were modular weekend courses, all with the same concept: a professor in a classroom ‘showing slides’ and ‘delivering material,’ which the students would then have to apply in practice. That’s how orthodontics was taught, how I learned, and how I taught. Meanwhile, in 2018, I started teaching dental aligners, using exactly the same system, where the practical component was minimal. Associated at the time with the Invisalign brand, we trained more than 300 colleagues in Portugal over the course of about five years. That’s when I discovered the Suzuki method.”
He adds that it is “a pedagogical philosophy developed by Japanese violinist Shinichi Suzuki that teaches music naturally, comparing learning an instrument to acquiring a native language. The musician emphasizes the importance of a stimulating environment, auditory learning before reading staff or notes, and a progressive and systematic repertoire. In other words, it’s a teaching method ‘in reverse’: we start with practice and then move on to theory. We give the violin to children, teach them how to position the instrument, and through repetition, they arrive at the melody and naturally learn to read the staff.”
Pedro Costa Monteiro presented this method to the brand he currently works with – Angel Aligner – and they gave him carte blanche to move forward. “We then began applying the Suzuki method to orthodontics, a method we call ‘beginning with the end in mind,’ which, in orthodontics, more specifically with aligners, is 100% adaptable. What we have to define, right from the start, is the final position of our patient’s teeth; that is, before we begin treatment, we need to know how it will end. The CEO of this brand was very enthusiastic about the plan. We spent six months defining the lines of action, and in 2024, we launched the project. The response was incredible. The course sold out in two days, and the feedback from participants was very positive.”
Full interview at DentalPro 185.
