When I was in grade school a new dentist opened a practice in the small town where I grew up. My aunt went to see him, and he recommended she get half a dozen “potential cavities” filled. He explained that a potential cavity was a place on her teeth that had the potential to develop a cavity. He recommended drilling a hole where there was none and filling it thus being proactive. She declined and my family got a good laugh over his aggressive practice style.
My father used the term money hungry to describe the new dentist but apparently the dental industry has its own nomenclature. A few years ago, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about the divide between conservative practice dentists and aggressive ones. There are two distinct schools of thought. One school, primarily younger dentists who have school loans, families to feed and bills to pay, favors more aggressive dental care. The other school of thought was primarily older dentists with established practices filled with patients who liked them. Each school of thought believed theirs was the appropriate one. For its part, the American Dental Association refused to weigh-in on the debate. There were differing opinions even among the leadership. The problem of overly aggressive dental care still exists.
Kaiser Family Foundation Health News reported on a troubling trend. Some dentists are pulling ‘healthy’ and treatable teeth to profit from implants. A woman Kaiser interviewed went to an implant center that advertised on television. The cost to replace all her existing upper teeth with implants was $31,000. The procedure to replace the teeth was performed all at once. It did not go well. She ultimately had to pay another dentist for corrective surgery. According to KFF Health News:
Dental implants have been used for more than half a century to surgically replace missing or damaged teeth with artificial duplicates, often with picture-perfect results. While implant dentistry was once the domain of a small group of highly trained dentists and specialists, tens of thousands of dental providers now offer the surgery and place millions of implants each year in the U.S.
There were numerous red flags from the anecdote told by Kaiser. Seeking opinions on dentistry at an implant center is one. It’s like the old saying, “if your only tool is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” Replacing healthy teeth with implants is another. Same day implants are yet another red flag. Finally, paying as much for a dental procedure as a new car without a second or third opinion is especially bad.
I have an implant, which I got it in Costa Rica several years ago. My wife has two implants from a specialist in the United States. Her dentist referred to a local specialist who had performed more than 10,000 implants in his career. When she had her procedure, the implant dentist would stop and take an x-ray, compare it to others and then take another. This went on all during the procedure. All told it took nearly three hours for two implants. He was old school. There were no shortcuts. He took his time and his results were excellent.
My experience in Costa Rica was rather different. My dentist ordered a panoramic x-ray of my teeth and jaw. The oral surgeon reviewed the x-ray and designed a surgical guide to guide the drill bit into the desired place on my jaw. He had removed a deteriorating dental bridge a year earlier and inserted a bone graft. The oral surgeon required six months to a year for a bone graft to heal before he would insert the implant. He required another year of healing after the titanium implant was installed before the crown was attached. My wife didn’t need a bone graft, but her implant surgeon also wanted her jaw to heal for nearly a year before he recommended installing the crowns.
Most dentists advise that implants are a last resort when a tooth cannot be saved due to infection. Neither are implants maintenance free. Real human teeth are always better than metal posts tied to a fake tooth. It’s like other areas of life, be skeptical if it sounds too good to be true and get second opinions before agreeing to expensive procedures.
The entire article is worth reading: Dentists Are Pulling ‘Healthy’ and Treatable Teeth To Profit From Implants, Experts Warn – KFF Health News