Alexander is a young, quirky and entrepreneurial endodontist.

Alexander Schryvers

“A toothache can be unbearable. I’ve had patients — innocent little kids, powerful women, and fierce men alike — crying their eyes out when they walked into my dental clinic. The pain is killing them. And then I pull out my instruments to offer them relief. Isn’t that wonderful? In my teens I came across a documentary on microsurgery and I was immediately hooked. To be able to perform a medical procedure with such an astonishing amount of precision? Wow! Even today, after all these years, it still feels amazing to be working meticulously on just a few square millimeters, with a lens that magnifies everything 15 times. Our job requires maniacal focus and tremendously well-developed fine motoric skills. And yes, I admit it’s a bit of a kick, the monomania.

Sometimes my friends mock me. They claim one must be a bit odd if one wants to become an endodontist. But that depends on the perspective you take. Here’s how I see things: I use my tools to drill to the very heart of a tooth — which is the hardest part of the human body — and I remove something that has died a long time ago. Some find that a gross and appalling idea. It is. Sometimes I see pus gushing from a tooth on the rhythm of a beating heart. And I love it. Removing filthiness from a human body — providing relief from a dirty, smelly liquid that causes pain — has a certain beauty to it, too.”

KU Leuven

Alexander obtained his degree as a general dentist at KU Leuven (2015) and graduated summa cum laude for his postgraduate degree in endodontics (2018). He combines a somewhat blunt, idiosyncratic mind with a rigorous discipline.