Dr. Deric Ikuta was raised in Reedley and graduated from Reedley
High School. He went to UC Davis and received his bachelor’s
degree in biology. From there, he attended the University of the
Pacific Dugoni School of Dentistry and proudly earned his dental
license in 2005. Since graduation, he has returned to his hometown
and has been practicing ever since at Ikuta Dental Health Center.
Dr. Deric has attended over 1,000 hours of continuing education.
It is both a passion and a sense of pride for him to keep learning
the new sciences of the dental field. He was the youngest dentist
to achieve his LVI Fellow in 2009. His passion-filled purpose
evolved in 2015 when he became a father. His daughter had severe
feeding issues which led her nearly to a failure to thrive
diagnosis. Her feeding issues were mostly due to having an
undiagnosed and untreated tongue- and lip-tie. This sent him down
an unplanned path. After attending several classes on tongue- and
lip-ties, Dr. Deric became the first doctor in the central valley
to perform laser surgery of tongue- and lip-ties. When his
daughter started suffering from night terrors and was diagnosed
with sleep apnea, Dr. Deric started getting educated on both sleep
apnea and airway-centric orthodontics as his next area of focus.
Pursuing the type of dentistry that is personal to Dr. Deric is
what sets him apart from the herd. He has empathy for the patients
and what they have gone through. His kindness and passion really
shine when he is working with patients that have similar issues
that he or his family have dealt with.
When Dr. Deric is not at the office, you will find him spending
his time with his family, friends, and enjoying sports – he will
very often combine all three. He loves watching a game or even
attempting to reclaim some semblance of youth by playing sports
recreationally. He is also a big fan of comedy. He loves funny
movies, stand up comedy, and being around people that are funny
and love to laugh, especially at his quirky jokes that only sort
of make sense. As anyone who has spent any length of time with Dr.
Deric can attest, he also is a veracious consumer of a wide
variety of podcasts and cannot wait to tell you about them! You
never know if he will start talking about theoretical physics,
economics, or pop culture. It’s usually whatever happened to be on
his podcast playlist that morning.