In 1990, prior to submitting her PhD thesis on sedation techniques for paediatric dental patients, Dr Gamze Erdogan participated in studies at Kings College, London, to research methods that could be applied to paediatric dental patients who are unable to cooperate during dental treatment, which she specialised in during her final year of her PhD programme.
Her specialties are :
- acquired or transmitted fear, and/or
- intellectual or physiological growth retardation,
- disability
After her PhD and her doctoral thesis on pediatric dentistry, Dr. Gamze Erdogan started working as a dental clinic manager in the schools of Marly and Villars-sur-Glâne in the canton of Fribourg, as a school dentist for 30 communities, for 27 years, while deciding to pursue her academic career and her own research, which was at the time the last academic step at the university.
In 1996, she initiated a pilot project at the cantonal level in which a special protection programme is developed and implemented for pre-school children and target groups at high risk of dental and oral diseases due to their social, cultural and economic environment. In this project, it organised a social network including paediatricians, nurses, teachers, parents, administrators and volunteers to bring together under one roof those groups that have a positive effect on the oral and dental health of paediatric patients. The pilot project, initiated by Dr Gamze Erdogan in the school dental clinics of Marly and Villars-sur-Glâne in 1996, contributes to the early detection of groups more prone to oral diseases due to social, economic and cultural factors and policies have been developed to reduce the rate of caries as a result of the measures taken while they also allow for the early diagnosis of many parameters threatening oral health, in particular pre-school baby bottle caries
She was awarded the Swiss Rudolph Hotz Prize 2009 for her research in which the results of the cantonal pilot project were published in 2004-2006 and the dental and oral health of 1690 patients from 30 different regions aged between 5 and 18 years was presented according to WHO criteria.
For the next seven years, she focused heavily on fear management during dental treatment.
Dr. Gamze Erdogan, through the training she received on hypnosis since 2015, completed the treatment of hundreds of pediatric patients sent to general anesthesia due to non-cooperation and diagnosed without dental treatment under normal clinical conditions by more than one dentist and thus contributed to adding the hypnosis method as an alternative treatment to nitrous oxygen and general anesthesia in the official list of specialty treatments presented in school dental services in the Canton of Fribourg. Hypnosis is officially operated by Dr. Gamze Erdogan since 2018 as an alternative treatment against general anaesthesia and nitrous oxygen applications in the school dental services (SDS) of the canton of Fribourg.
Being one of the pioneers in the application of hypnosis in pediatric dentistry and developing the technique of colour hypnosis for her small patients, Dr. Gamze Erdogan, with the aim of presenting her studies in the service of the larger masses, started to share the recorded videos with the support and permission of the patients' families on the ethical protocol established with her colleagues and the medical world. The scientific results were presented in 2019 for the first time at the International Dental Congress.
Dr Gamze Erdogan was not only responsible for the oral health of 2500 children within the boundaries of her municipality but also for the oral health of the children of Fondation les Buissonnets, Institut St-Joseph and Institut Les Peupliers.