Toothache

[bmccasland]

Speaking of dentist's boats & beach houses...I had to get an implant last year. As I'm sitting in the chair waiting for the novocaine to kick in, I'm looking at the x-ray of my mouth he has up on his computer. As I'm looking the x-ray goes away and a series of photos starts rotating - pictures of all his wonderful vacations! Pictures of the family skiing in the Alps, tropical beaches, white water rafting, hiking, and a big dinner on a patio.
Great. As I'm sitting there fretting on how I'm going to pay the $3000, I get to see what he does on vacation.

Oh that stinks!
Having had an implant that failed - I hope you have enough bone to support the screw. I had 11 mm of bone for 16 mm of screw (as measured on the digital x-ray). The dental surgeon that removed mine was one of those that publishes on the process, and his comment was: "don't they read my articles?!" I didn't have enough bone to support the screw, so of course it was going to fail, and in essence, I shouldn't have had an implant in the first place. He removed the failed implant, did a bone graft for the hole and then said if I wanted another implant I would need an additional bone graft - to build up the bone. Door #2 was to have a bridge, which is what I picked.
The details of the additional bone graft and healing time was more than I wanted, and I'd already spent enough on that one stinking tooth: root canal & crown, abscess, pull the tooth & bone graft, implant, remove the implant & bone graft #2, and finally a bridge. Insurance paid for treating the abscess (step #2) and pulling the tooth (step #3), everything else was out of pocket.
They got nice vacations, I didn't.

[jessmarimba]

Honestly, part of my fear of dentists comes from all of the unnecessary work they seem to do. Imaging has become very high tech, allowing them to find "blemishes" in your enamel, which in many cases, will never progress to a cavity. They convince you that it will become a cavity and they should fill it now, before it gets worse. One you drill, a cavity will ALWAYS become worse. They eventually leak around the edges of the filling and will rot out from the inside. So once they drill & fill, they provide themselves with years of work fixing something that was not broken to begin with (replacing fillings, then crowns, then root canals.) How else will they make money?

There have been a few recent studies published on the dramatic increase in dental work in the last few decades (exponential, almost). I don't have time to find one now but will try and search later. I'm sure it is partly tied to diet but also has to do with the monetary aspect.

[OakLeaf]

There was a piece in the NYT within the last month, although I never clicked through to the original studies.

Yeah, last crown I got, I let them fill a "pre" cavity sort of thing on another tooth as long as I was there. Probably shouldn't have.