Meet Dr. Gallagher
Dr. Gallagher has been practicing oral and maxillofacial in Austin since 1984. He is one of the only oral surgeons in central Texas that has completed two years of residency training in anesthesiology. When asked why he took so much time to learn and practice anesthesia he answered, “ As oral surgeons we perform a lot of surgery in our offices, and I wanted to be optimally prepared to offer a full range of pain control and anesthesia to my patients in an extremely safe manner. We can provide safe, effective anesthesia for people of all ages, from small children to the elderly. It is normal for people to be apprehensive about surgery, so comprehensive anesthesia training and experience benefits everyone, particularly very scared persons.”
Dr. Gallagher’s father was in the U.S. Air Force, so Dr. Gallagher traveled and lived in many states and countries, including Hawaii and the Philippines. He attended college in Ohio at Heidelberg College, and graduated with a B.S. in biology. He completed the usual four years of dental school in a three program at New York University College of Dentistry in New York City, and received his D.D.S. degree in 1977. He completed his first year of anesthesiology residency training at Mt. Sinai Hospital and Medical School in New York City. His second year of fellowship training in anesthesiology was completed at John Peter Smith Hospital in Ft. Worth, Texas. He then completed the oral and maxillofacial surgery residency training program at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Dallas, Southwestern Medical School, and Parkland Memorial Hospital in 1982. During his years of training Dr. Gallagher also performed clinical research, coauthored many scientific papers, presented lectures at many national scientific meetings, and contributed to textbooks about the correction of facial deformities, as well as other topics.
Following residency training, Dr. Gallagher enjoyed private practice and taught medical students and residents at the Brown University Medical School hospitals in Providence, Rhode Island. He was director of maxillofacial trauma at the medical center hospital. In 1983, he was a lecturer/surgeon to the Australian and New Zealand Societies of Surgery in Melbourne, where he demonstrated reconstructive surgery for a month, and was interviewed on the Australian Broadcast Corporation national television network. Two years later, in 1984, he declined the opportunity for a tenured teaching appointment with private practice in Rhode Island to pursue his long time goal of living with his family and practicing oral and maxillofacial surgery in Austin, Texas.
For many years Dr. Gallagher volunteered his surgical talents in Guatemala and Honduras, especially correcting cleft lip and palate deformities in rural areas, and lecturing at the medical schools in Guatemala City and in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Dr. Gallagher has been featured in Good Housekeeping, Women's Day, and Redbook magazines. He has also been voted Super Dentist in 2004 and 2005 for Texas Monthly and Top Dentist in 2007 and 2008 for Austin Monthly.
Dr. Gallagher enjoys an active family life
with his wife and four children. He has also been very involved
within the local community through Boy Scouts, baseball coach,
church, and he has even been a fire commissioner for Travis County.
At his home he is always constructing projects for the house and
yard, tends a small orchard, and raises honeybees. There are even
bird feeders in the backyard of the oral surgery office.
