“Many colleagues deserved as much or more than me the Santa Apolonia Award given to me by the General Council of Dentistry and Stomatology of Spain, but I was lucky to be chosen” explains Dr. Vicente Jimenez Lopez.
From a personal point of view, this award is a great honor for the doctor, because it is undoubtedly the most important one awarded in his profession.
For Dr. Jiménez López this award is the professional recognition by all his colleagues, for the years dedicated to study, for writing five books translated into 6 languages, for having given conferences in more than 20 countries, as well as for having been president of 4 scientific societies, two of them international.
“I always say that I have been a very lucky person, because life has treated me very well and from a professional point of view, I have been fortunate that all my teachers, of many nationalities, have been great friends of mine,” explains the doctor. This interpersonal relationship is a great advantage when it comes to learning and understanding the difficulties of our profession.
He was fortunate to have a teacher, also a Santa Apolonia Award winner, Dr. Jose Luis Lopez Alvarez, who, from the beginning, made him see the profession from a very simple point of view, but at the same time with a scientific depth that made it easy to understand the most difficult part of the specialty, which is what we know as occlusion. Undoubtedly, this is one of the most important areas, if not the most important, and which accredits those who master it as good professionals, creating the difference between the others.
In 1984 he had the great fortune, together with Dr. Ramon Martinez Corria, to learn about implantology directly from the hands of Professor Branemark, the discoverer of osseointegration. “It opened up a very wide field for me, which, combined with occlusion, has allowed me to develop different important aspects of how to adjust the teeth in the mouth, a subject studied in many of my books,” says Dr. Vicente Jiménez.
But all the generosity shown by the doctor’s colleagues has obliged him to give a lot back to others, because he has received a lot from his teachers and colleagues and this Santa Apolonia Award, which can summarize a scientific life of friendship and affection towards his colleagues, friends and patients, means a little bit of having achieved everything in exchange for nothing, and makes him feel loved and respected in his profession, which, in the end, is what we all want to thank life for.