Robert C. Fazio, DMD
Robert C. Fazio, DMD, was an outstanding educator, clinician, author, and public speaker. For nine consecutive years, Dentistry Today named him one of the Top 100 Clinicians in Continuing Education in Dentistry.
To attend one of Dr. Fazio’s courses was to witness an instructor who was at once both a master of his pedagogy and an eloquent presenter who charmed his professional audiences around the world with his genuine warmth and dedication.
“Dr. Fazio brings expertise and passion to his lecture…He is a naturally gifted speaker who looks at ease, has command of the room, holds the audience’s attention, and gives his all to inform the audience,” wrote the authoritative, independent Continuing Education Review.
“His command of the content was such that he never had to look at his slides,” adds Dr. Leslie S.T. Fang, a clinician-teacher at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, who collaborated with Dr. Fazio as both instructors and co-authors.
“Bob was particularly impressive when questions were raised,” Dr. Fang recalls. “He would dissect each question into the medical and the dental components…[and] the audience definitely responded to his warmth.”
Dr. Fazio, who died of an intracranial hemorrhage on April 29, 2018, age 68, spent 35 years as an Associate Clinical Professor of Surgery at Yale Medical School and maintained a private practice devoted to Oral Medicine and Periodontology in Norwalk, CT.
Among Dr. Fazio’s books are The Ultimate Cheat Sheets–The Practical Guide for Dentists, Principles and Practice of Oral Medicine, and Oral Medicine Secrets, each co-authored with Dr. Fang.
A one-time member of the DOCS Education faculty, topics that Dr. Fazio regularly lectured on included, Oral Sedation Dentistry; Antibiotics in Dentistry; Periodontitis & Peri-Implantitis; and Medicine, Dentistry and Drugs.
Dr. Fazio was an honors graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard School of Dental Medicine. He also completed Clinical Fellowships in Periodontology and Oral Medicine at Harvard.
In a written tribute to Dr. Fazio, Dr. Fang called his passing “a great loss to friends and family, to dental education, and to the dental profession.”
Dr. Fazio and his wife Barbara, who predeceased him, were the parents of two adult children, Daniele “Danny” and Alexandra “Ali.”
“Bob and Barbara’s lives were inextricably interwoven with those of their children and grandchildren,” Dr. Fang says. Both Dr. Fazio and his wife, “were the quintessential embodiments of the phrase ‘living life to the fullest,’ Dr. Fang adds.