Advanced Education
Program in Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery

The Advanced Educational Program in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans is a six-year OMS-MD residency program designed to fulfill the educational requirements of the Council on Dental Education of the American Dental Association and the American Board of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. (See also) OMS Website. Each year three or four applicants are selected to begin seventy-two months of training. The Medical Center of Louisiana (Charity Hospital in New Orleans and University Hospital) in New Orleans serves as the primary teaching hospital. Other affiliated institutions are Earl K. Long Memorial Hospital in Baton Rouge, Carolinas Healthcare System, and the dental and medical schools of Louisiana State University. Biomedical science instruction is incorporated throughout the six-year residency program. Formal didactic courses outside of the medical school curriculum include Applied Head and Neck Surgical Anatomy, Advanced Oral Pathology, TMJ Diseases, and Orthognathic Surgery. Conferences consist of Clinical Pathology, Preoperative Surgery, Journal Club, and oral and maxillofacial surgery teaching seminars.

Enrollment in the LSU School of Medicine for Introduction to Clinical Medicine, Clinical Pathology, and Dermatology is concurrent with the initial twelve-month clinical oral and maxillofacial surgery rotation. Advanced standing for third year entry into medical school is predicated on passage of the national Medical Board Step I in June of the applicant's first year of training. Following 24 months of medical school, with four months of anesthesia included in the resident's 3rd year of training, one year of General Surgery credit is gained with rotation in the Emergency Room, General Surgery and Surgical Subspecialties, Neurosurgery, up to three months of oral and maxillofacial surgery, and as necessary, Anesthesia. The residents return to the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Department for twenty-four months to complete the program.

Patient load during the thirty-six months of oral and maxillofacial surgery training includes extensive maxillofacial hard and soft-tissue trauma and reconstruction, orthognathic, and craniofacial surgery, temporomandibular joint disorders, all forms of cosmetic surgery, pathology, preprosthetic and implant surgery, advanced exodontia, and ambulatory outpatient general anesthesia. The combined annual inpatient surgery at all teaching hospitals exceeds 1,500 cases. Over 25,000 outpatients are seen each year, which account for 6,000 procedures. The program is closely supervised by five full-time and fifteen part time board certified oral and maxillofacial surgeons.

Applicants must be graduates or seniors in the upper 25% of their class of dental schools recognized by the Council on Dental Education of the American Dental Association. Applications from graduates of dental schools outside the U.S. and Canada will be considered if they have attended a US equivalency program and received a US DDS equivalency degree.  Foreign applicants must already have permanent USA residency status prior to application. 

Participation in the Postdoctoral Application Support Service (PASS) program is required. Additional experience beyond dental school (general practice residency, anesthesia residency, private practice, graduate school, etc.) may strengthen the applicant's credentials. A $30.00 processing fee payable to the LSU School of Dentistry is required of those applying. After all applications have been received and reviewed, invitations for interviews will be sent out by the director of the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Residency Program. Applicants must agree to participate in the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Residents Matching Program, the description of which is excerpted from the AAOMS below.

The use of the matching program for first-year residents in oral and maxillofacial surgery residency programs has been used for residency positions since 1986. This program is sponsored by the American Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons and administered through the National Matching Service. The matching program is financed by fees paid by the AAOMS, applicants, and participating programs.

The matching program provides an orderly method to enable applicants to obtain positions in the first-year residency program of their choice and also helps programs obtain applicants of their choice. This program eliminates an inequitable recruitment process that forces premature decisions and puts unnecessary pressure on both applicants as well as programs and is very similar to the National Matching Program for medical students applying to medical residency programs throughout the United States. Applicants and programs continue to contact each other directly and interview and evaluate each other independently of the Matching Program. However, no offers are made during this period. After all of the interviews are completed, both applicants and residency programs submit a confidential "Rank Order List" in which they list the applicants or programs in order of their preference. Both applicants and programs may safely list preferred choices first without consideration for how they will be ranked by the other party. All information submitted to the Matching Program is kept confidential.

Participating programs must offer all first-year positions through the Matching Program. Programs may not make or require any commitments or contracts with anyone prior to the release of the Match results. Similarly, applicants may apply only to programs that are participating in the Matching Program or until the results of the Match are released. The confidential "Rank Order Lists" submitted by each program and applicant are the sole determinants of their respective order or preference of the match.

The Match results constitute a binding commitment from which neither the applicant nor the program can withdraw without mutual written agreement. The program must offer appointments to each applicant with whom it is matched, and the applicant must accept the offer from the program unless both parties agree to release each other from the Match result. The program may not accept any applicant who was matched elsewhere and subsequently not released from that match.

LSU Six-Year Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery/MD Program - New Orleans

Key Information

LSUSD Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery
American Association of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeons