Dr. Blain VanNice, DDS: An Engineer's Approach to Dentistry in Fort Smith

He was going to build things. He builds teeth instead.

Dr. Blain VanNice earned a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Design Engineering from the University of Colorado Boulder, graduating Magna Cum Laude. That is not the usual first step toward a dental degree.

In his own words: "I have always had a fascination with medicine and engineering, and I realized that dentistry is the perfect combination."

He went on to the University of Colorado Anschutz School of Dental Medicine for his DDS, and he sees patients at our Fort Smith office.

A crown is a load-bearing structure, and he treats it like one

A tooth is a small piece of engineering under constant stress, absorbing force thousands of times a day at angles that change with whatever you are chewing. When a crown cracks, it usually fails for a reason a structural engineer would recognize immediately. Wrong material for the load. Stress concentrated at a corner. A design that did not account for how the opposing tooth actually hits it.

Dr. VanNice thinks that way by training. He is looking at how forces travel through your bite, where the failure point will be in five years, and how to design the restoration so it does not end up there. He is precise about margins, about occlusion, about tolerances you will never see and will absolutely feel if they are wrong.

The design half of his degree shows up in the cosmetic work. Proportion, symmetry, how light moves across a surface. Designing a smile is a design problem before it is a dental problem, and he is comfortable in both halves of that sentence.

Where he trained, and who he trained for

His training included a pediatric rotation at Children's Hospital Aurora, which is why he is unusually steady with kids. He also served underserved communities in Alamosa, Colorado and through Denver Health, treating people who had gone years without care and arrived with complicated needs. That work makes a dentist efficient and hard to shock.

He received a Mentor of the Year Award, given for teaching other people how to do this well. Dentists who win teaching awards tend to be the ones who can explain what they are doing and why, which is exactly what you want when it is your mouth and your money.

• BS, Computer Science and Design Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder, Magna Cum Laude
• DDS, University of Colorado Anschutz School of Dental Medicine
• Mentor of the Year Award
• Pediatric rotation, Children's Hospital Aurora
• Community service in Alamosa, Colorado and through Denver Health
• Fort Smith office

Outside the office

He is a nerd in the good and honest sense of the word, and he would tell you so himself. Anime. Computers. Digital art. Game design. Creative writing.

This is a professional advantage more often than you would expect. Teenagers who will not say three words to an adult in a white coat will talk to him for ten minutes about a game. And a person who writes fiction for fun can explain a treatment plan as a story rather than a list of tooth numbers.

What it is like to be his patient

Expect more explanation than you are used to. He will show you the image, point at the thing, and tell you what happens if it is treated and what happens if it is not. He does not get impatient when you ask the same question twice.

Expect him to be careful about the small stuff. If a bite feels a millimeter high, tell him, and he will fix it rather than telling you that you will get used to it.

And if you are bringing a frightened child, he trained on frightened children at a children's hospital. He is not going to be rattled by yours.