It’s really not fair to take an example of one unethical dentist and sell the story as “the truth about dentistry”.
Imagine "the truth about web developers". God help us all.
Dentistry is less scientific and more gratuitous than people think (2019)
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Re: Dentistry is less scientific and more gratuitous than people think (2019)
#42Well it's only anecdotical of course, but I had a similar experience a couple of years ago that made me very confused about dentistry in general. At the time a had a small tooth ache so I was planning to visit a dentist to check it. I was living in Switzerland, where dentist costs are very high, but I was about to go on holiday to Tenerife, where prices are much lower. So I checked on the Internet and chose the denti…
I had a similar story but tend to view it more generously.
I am based in the UK, but ended up seeing dentists in Spain and Dubai who were both alarmed by stuff that the UK dentist was letting slide. Maintenece issues similar to yours.
I ended up having most of my fillings replaced at half the cost of the UK work, and have had a problem free 2/3 years.
You pays your money and takes your chances, but I prefer the approach of jumping on any issues early in my ear against too many sweets and fizzy drinks!
Re: Dentistry is less scientific and more gratuitous than people think (2019)
#43After experiencing this first hand in the US it was really nice to return back to Europe where in my opinion unnecessary operations and active selling of special cleaning procedures are somewhat more rare. I just had my yearly checkup and the dentist again noticed few small inactive cavities and said we should just monitor them like last year.
In Germany pretty much every dentist will recommend you a "profesionelle Zahnreinigung" (professional tooth cleaning), and if you lookup what studies exist to show that it does any good, there's only one study that's basically useless (they tested a combination of the professional tooth cleaning and a lecture on proper self tooth cleaning and showed that this helps, so in the end you know one of those or a combination helps, but you don't know which one). So yeah, this is pretty much a problem in Europe, too.
Re: Dentistry is less scientific and more gratuitous than people think (2019)
#44It’s really not fair to take an example of one unethical dentist and sell the story as “the truth about dentistry”.
Chalk me up as another anecdatum of being subjected to questionable dentist practices.
If you’ll permit me to grossly oversimplify, I feel like dentists are to medicine what software developers are to engineering.
Both professions tend to play faster and looser with rules and standards, and tend to be closer to trade careers than most of their superset.
Re: Dentistry is less scientific and more gratuitous than people think (2019)
#45It’s really not fair to take an example of one unethical dentist and sell the story as “the truth about dentistry”.
Welcome to modern journalism, particularly that of ‘established’ and ‘reputable’ outlets like The Atlantic.
It’s really not fair to take an example of one illogical article and sell the story as “the truth about journalism”.
Re: Dentistry is less scientific and more gratuitous than people think (2019)
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you read the article? One of two studies they provided was from Europe.
In my experience we've got these two options here: - socialized dentistry, where unless you're screaming in pain dentists take two peeks into your mouth and say it's fine and tell you to get out so they can take the next patient in the 200 person line outside (and shill their afternoon private practice to you if they happen to be the more shady type) - private dentistry, where they'll always find something random tha…
Not sure how it works elsewhere, but isn’t Germany the middle ground?
Basic operations are all socialized by public healthcare, anything extra (and that includes white fillings instead of the ugly ones…) is private.
Re: Dentistry is less scientific and more gratuitous than people think (2019)
#47After experiencing this first hand in the US it was really nice to return back to Europe where in my opinion unnecessary operations and active selling of special cleaning procedures are somewhat more rare. I just had my yearly checkup and the dentist again noticed few small inactive cavities and said we should just monitor them like last year.
In Germany pretty much every dentist will recommend you a "profesionelle Zahnreinigung" (professional tooth cleaning), and if you lookup what studies exist to show that it does any good, there's only one study that's basically useless (they tested a combination of the professional tooth cleaning and a lecture on proper self tooth cleaning and showed that this helps, so in the end you know one of those or a combinatio…
I drink a lot of coffee and black tea. I very much value the half-yearly cleaning just to remove the dark spots that are not a health-risk, but look bad.
And almost every private tooth health insurance covers those anyway, so if you have that for others reasons, it’s included.
Re: Dentistry is less scientific and more gratuitous than people think (2019)
#48Well it's only anecdotical of course, but I had a similar experience a couple of years ago that made me very confused about dentistry in general. At the time a had a small tooth ache so I was planning to visit a dentist to check it. I was living in Switzerland, where dentist costs are very high, but I was about to go on holiday to Tenerife, where prices are much lower. So I checked on the Internet and chose the denti…
I used to get my dental work done at a student clinic, so it was often dental students doing minor procedures supervised by much more experienced faculty. I remember overhearing one explain to a student that different people and mouths have a different standard of what's acceptable. Someone who meticulously brushes and flosses and spends top dollar fixing every problem as soon as it comes up is likely to want a procedure like you described. Someone else who barely has any dental hygiene and a mouth full of fillings and gingivitis would be given all necessary care, but not necessarily given an exhaustive touch-up if the dentist feels they'll just be back for the same thing in a few years and not get any substantive lasting benefit from it.
I don't know whether this is a generally-held attitude in the profession.
Re: Dentistry is less scientific and more gratuitous than people think (2019)
#49In my experience, the majority of dentists are criminal crooks. It‘s generally not nice to trick and steal from people, but dentists are in the unique position of leaving their victims in severe, chronic pain that can only be fixed by other dentists. I myself suffer from varying, chronic pain after a pointless visit where two "tiny" holes were drilled.
Anecdotally, but I find that female dentists seem to be less criminal crooks than male dentists. I only go to females for this reason.
Wow, how many criminal crooks have you personally dealt with? How much anecdata are we talking?
Re: Dentistry is less scientific and more gratuitous than people think (2019)
#50All dentists I've tried, found by various methods (including recommedation from a GP I trust) have been dishonest and/or incompetent. A small business, serving laypersons who cannot evaluate the work, is prone to it. I think the only way is to stick with one dentists, so they see you as a long-term investment. funfact: Yelp was inspired by the difficulty of finding good dentists. Now I'm interested in DIY dentistry.…
Fuji 9! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgI3Y7gxMO4
First thing I thought of too.