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Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments

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Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments

#71

Post by donatj »

tomxor wrote: post #39
donatj wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a new dentist for a broken filling and they tried to tell me I had 14 cavities and set me down with a finance person to set up a payment plan for how I was going to pay for them over the next 5 years. I went to a second dentist, they fixed the broken filling and said my teeth were otherwise fine. I have the paperwork to back this up. I’d been seeing another dentist for a while and he suddenly wanted to crow…

Unnecessary medical procedures are extremely immoral, do you mind sharing what country/practice this was in?

United States. Here’s my yelp review of the first place.

https://www.yelp.com/biz/shamblott-family-dentistry-hopkins?...

Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments

#72

Post by b112 »

warent wrote: post #53
b112 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What's and adblocker" - my Grandma. Well, you know a phone book? And, you know how if you want to phone someone, you tend to look up their number in a phone book? "Yes" Well, computers are the same. They only know numbers, they're computers after all, and DNS maps the names you see for websites, to numbers, so computers can find the website. "Uh, OK" The adblocker I am going to install, makes it impossible for the c…

Maps names of websites? I don't know what that means. Timmy showed me The Amazon and the egg cooker from there worked wonderfully so I don't want an ad blocker.

Granmda knew what it meant. She'd been looking up names in the phonebook here whole life, mapping them to numbers.

Been doing the same thing for lots of paper databases, like address books, and been using indexes in books too.

Not to mention, how the library indexed books in her day.

Zero confusion about DNS after I explained urls to her. None.

Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments

#73

Post by loeg »

A pretty obvious clue from the beginning here was:

> your insurance won't cover it

So to answer

> So how do most patients make this decision?

0. Insurance won't cover it, so they don't get it ($), or

4. Insurance won't cover it, which is a signal it isn't an evidence-based intervention, so they don't get it.

Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments

#74

Post by pc86 »

loeg wrote: post #73

A pretty obvious clue from the beginning here was: > your insurance won't cover it So to answer > So how do most patients make this decision? 0. Insurance won't cover it, so they don't get it ($), or 4. Insurance won't cover it, which is a signal it isn't an evidence-based intervention, so they don't get it.

Insurance doesn't cover adult orthodontia either but that doesn't mean it's not evidence-based (just elective). And a laser-based cleaning technique sounds pretty elective.

Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments

#75

Post by ceejayoz »

tomxor wrote: post #39
donatj wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a new dentist for a broken filling and they tried to tell me I had 14 cavities and set me down with a finance person to set up a payment plan for how I was going to pay for them over the next 5 years. I went to a second dentist, they fixed the broken filling and said my teeth were otherwise fine. I have the paperwork to back this up. I’d been seeing another dentist for a while and he suddenly wanted to crow…

Unnecessary medical procedures are extremely immoral, do you mind sharing what country/practice this was in?

Not OP, but there's been a lot of this in the US.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/patients-pressure...

> Former employees say Aspen Dental trained them in high-pressure sales. Corporate management scrutinizes the production of dentists and staff daily. And internal documents show that dentists get paid bonuses as key production targets are met.

https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/health/2018/01/10/koo...

> "Especially when that fraud involves performing unnecessary procedures on kids —here, unnecessary baby root canals and tooth extractions, among other procedures —we will not hesitate to use every tool at our disposal to punish those who break the law," Bash said.

> The accusations against Kool Smiles included prohibiting parents from being present during root canals "to keep hidden the child's suffering" and retaliation against "unproductive" dentists, according to a federal complaint filed in San Antonio in 2013.

Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments

#76

Post by elcomet »

acheron wrote: post #44
petesergeant wrote: post #7

> Laser bacterial reduction (LBR) is just one example of the many high-stakes medical decisions Whether or not to drop $400 is not a "high-stakes medical decision". Also, expecting Google to give you high-quality medical advice when your actual, licensed, trained dental hygienest is not is asking a lot of a search engine. Personally I've found sticking "examine.com" on the end of most results to be very useful for an…

> Also, expecting Google to give you high-quality medical advice when your actual, licensed, trained dental hygienest is not is asking a lot of a search engine. This is true. > and "reddit.com" as a suffix pretty good for anything else. LOL. Our definitions of "high quality" are apparently different.

high quality here means "genuine", ie discusions made by real humans and not corporate advertising.

Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments

#77

Post by Aeolun »

donatj wrote: post #17
matsemann wrote: post #12

Why are dentists so scammy? In Norway I've seen documentaries about them sending the same people to multiple dentists, and some of them receive wildly different advice. Some of that can be ascribed to some being in the school of pro-active, so they want to fix your teeth at the first glance of issues. But in the end, most of the things being quoted were unnecessary. They all seemed very intent on removing wisdom teet…

I went to a new dentist for a broken filling and they tried to tell me I had 14 cavities and set me down with a finance person to set up a payment plan for how I was going to pay for them over the next 5 years. I went to a second dentist, they fixed the broken filling and said my teeth were otherwise fine. I have the paperwork to back this up. I’d been seeing another dentist for a while and he suddenly wanted to crow…

It is unbelievable how much my faith in the necessity of dental procedures has risen after I started going to see a dentist that was my friend first, and my dentist only later (after I got tired of constantly wondering if the others actually had my best interests at heart).

I never doubted the dentist I had during my youth, and as far as I know he’s actually just really good at his job, so it was kind of a shock to find that so many of them are just winging it.

Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments

#78

Post by bostonsre »

pc86 wrote: post #56
donatj wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a new dentist for a broken filling and they tried to tell me I had 14 cavities and set me down with a finance person to set up a payment plan for how I was going to pay for them over the next 5 years. I went to a second dentist, they fixed the broken filling and said my teeth were otherwise fine. I have the paperwork to back this up. I’d been seeing another dentist for a while and he suddenly wanted to crow…

I went to the same dentist for years as a child. Brushed my teeth once a day, never had any issues at all. All of sudden, during a regular checkup, he told my parents (I was ~15 at the time) that I had 9 cavities and needed fillings. In the 20 years since, I have never had a single cavity. And what a shock, he sold his practice between that procedure and my next checkup. I fully believe he was just pumping up his rev…

> as opposed to chiropractors, who are universally charlatans and frauds

I take it you've never thrown your back out and had an adjustment that fixed a lot of pain?

Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments

#79

Post by wara23arish »

snemvalts wrote: post #36

The biggest problem with Google and medicine are the summary boxes and QA widgets up top, matching a search term to an excerpt. It's hilariously bad, it pulls misleading info out of context. It is probably responsible for more than zero deaths worldwide.

This is 100% true. While attending an NLP class in college, a speaker from Google came and spoke about how they evolved their systems etc. He admitted himself that results from those QA excerpts are hilariously wrong.

Re: Google almost convinced me to spend $400 on useless laser treatments

#80

Post by arbitrage »

jnovek wrote: post #40

“ Medicine has become a three-way negotiation between you, your doctor, and The Algorithm.” This characterization makes it sound like a good thing. In reality, the doctor’s responsibility is being pushed to the patient because they are overbooked in the name of economic efficiency. As a patient with complex, non-specific medical condition, I can tell you how miserable this is. I can’t count on doctors _at all_ to mov…

You experience is similar to mine. It goes even further than that, though. I have seen the relief in a specialists eyes when I present them with research and tell them the decision that they should make for me. I am essentially designing my own treatment and care plans. I am not a medical professional, nor have I any training, either.

The United States' healthcare system is fundamentally broken. As it stands, it's probably completely irreparable, as well.

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