Should you trust your dentist?

Its a private dentist, he isnt cheap and I am not sure about some of their advice tbh...

I guess there are members that work in this industry so I would be interested in their view.

I ask because a few months ago I paid LOTS of money to save a tooth I have had trouble with for many years, I discovered this morning when waking up in bad pain that I needed some emergency work which is another £385.00 (Root work).

As it is a back tooth and one that had probably cost me £££ already, I said pull it and it was a tough job to get them to do so.

I just couldnt help but feel the argument was revenue related, what I am saying is I think he is seeing revenue going by pulling the tooth so didnt want to and put up a good argument.

What are your thoughts.

AO

PS: For clarification, it is a trouble some tooth, I am not simply trading teeth against costs.

I'm not sure about dentists private or NHS. Everytime I've been to the dentist, I've gone in fine and come out in pain. As a result I decided I'll just go to the dentist when I'm in pain. Thankfully so far, I haven't needed to go for fourteen years.

I certainly feel I can trust my dentist - dunno about yours though
The dentist I had as a kid was a sadistic, incompetent idiot though.

NHS yes...Private probably not....

I have a private dentist these days, not much choice really, and like Ian's he is very, very expensive. Only way to pay for recent Crowns was to pay " Insurance " of about £ 13.00 PM, this gives you two checks and clean and polish per year and 20% off any other treatment, much needed when a Crown is about £500.00.

He does encourage treatment rather than a " whip it out " approach but I think he sees this as a good thing for you although he does of course make loadsa money from this.

S'pose the short answer is yes, I trust him, but sometimes feel that perhaps a " make and mend " approach may have been more suited, would certainly have been cheaper !

here we don't have much of a choice. we have to trust a private. otherwise we have to wait 1 year or so to be checked. i pay 40 euros for check and polish (no insurance). public dental care here is really not good. but still the government is trying to change a bit the scenario. dentists are going abroad to find jobs…

My last dentist wasn't so much interested in the money, but was just incompetent.

Go to the NHS and see the local emergency dentist (usually at a hospital). As an emergency they will extract it for free.

Round where I live there is a lot of competition for private dentists, so they have to perform, or you just take your business elsewhere (why do people feel like they have to stay with one dentist? ... if you felt like a garage had ripped you off you wouldn't take your alfa there again would you?)

What car are these private dentists driving? Porche's, Ferrari's? They are a total rip-off like opticians. Dont trust a word they say. I go NHS luckily and because he's not making a killing out of me he doesnt do much work on me.

My teeth may all fall out, but i'll have some spare cash left.

just finished watching the “yada yada” episode from seinfeld. there’s a joke:
what do you call a doctor who failed at med school? a: a dentist.
but see the episode. is much better than the joke

Its not like they have a menu to look at or a price list on the wall. They can just pull prices out of mid air.

I would rather trust my life to a runaway train than believe anything a dentist has to say. Opticians are just as bad.

My dentist does actually have a price list on the wall!!! (well it's in one of his leaflets anyway) ... I see him once every 6 months, I'm literally in the chair for about 5 mins, he has a quick look around as says that everything is fine ... (pretty good hourly rate when you consider I pay £11 per month ...)



... the hygienist on the other hand is a sadist ...

we should watch out. are there any dentists here?

I trust my dentist.

-Although they keep trying to book everyone in to see the dental hygienist.

Originally Posted by 156Chris

Round where I live there is a lot of competition for private dentists, so they have to perform, or you just take your business elsewhere (why do people feel like they have to stay with one dentist? ... if you felt like a garage had ripped you off you wouldn't take your alfa there again would you?)

Yes, a very good point, I suppose it must be inertia on my part. Originally went to mine as I had a jaw infection and was in agony, at one point I even contemplated using bleach as a mouthwash as, for some reason, I thought that this would help !

Other dentists were saying that " we could fit you in in 2/3 months ", think I would have chopped my head off before then. To be fair he is very good and the practise has won many awards but it hurts the wallet almost as much as owning an Alfa !

The pic shows his price list as at 2005 and note the " From, " all the treatments I have had have cost more than this guide. How does it compare with yours ?

http://www.alfaowner.com/Forum/attac...d=12175137 84

I suppose English dentists aren't much different from Norwegian dentists. A Norwegian newspaper carried out a test a few years ago. They sent the same person to a number of different private dentists to be diagnosed. The results varied wildly, with anything from 0 to 17 (IIRC) required fillings.

In the aftermath, all sorts of excuses were made by the dentists, with "Dentists don't always agree..." as one of the more popular ones. With the best of my will I can only interpret the result as the dentists being not very trustworthy, or that they are very incompetent. There may of course be some good ones, but they'd be hard to identify.

In my childhood in the 70's, the NHS school dentists routinely excavated teeth to the extreme, so that they would crumble some years down the line. I've got a couple of those, or rather, I haven't got them anymore... They were a bunch of sadistic brutes too (I suspect the kids were to learn to endure pain or something).

DJ
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