50 years ago, when dental drills became available, the landscape of dentistry changed. Instead of taking decay teeth out and replaced with removable dentures, we repaired teeth. This means that the rotten part of teeth were cleaned out and filled in with materials, at the time it was silver-coloured amalgam. As the years go by, it became widely expected that we’ll keep our teeth until we’re old.
In the past, it’s a common practice that patients visit dentists when they are experiencing pain or they have noticed a hole in their teeth. To me, this behaviour doesn’t make sense. If all patients turn up only when they have pain, then every dental visits will always be painful and unpleasant. But no one wants an unpleasant dental experience. What a catch-22…
As I pointed out in the previous blog, gum diseases are caused by bacteria around the gum. So the solution to this problem is to remove bacteria. A dentist’s job is to remove hard deposit while the patient’s job is to remove the soft plaque that build up every day so that it doesn’t sit around long enough to become hard.
Previously, I explained the significance of gum diseases and what can happen if left untreated. In this post, I would like to help patients understand what gum disease is because medical terms such as gingivitis often leave people confused. Gum diseases always involve bacteria…
On any given day, I would turn up at my practice and look at my appointment book. It’s not uncommon to see a new patient booking in for a ‘clean of their teeth’. After talking to many of these patients, the majority haven’t had professional cleaning done by a dentist for many years, even though they have an impression they probably need one. The tragic thing in my opinion is that they had been told by a dentist in the past that they have ‘gum disease’ but none of them understood what it was, why do they have them or what can be done about it.
This is the second part of “4 Reasons why you WANT your dentists to take X-ray films”.
One of the common objections to taking a dental X-ray is the cost but is it really a saving by not taking one? Let’s do the maths here. For the sake of argument, we are going to say 2 X-ray films cost $100 ($50×2), a filling or an extraction costs.
It always amazes me when patients come in for an examination but he or she says “I don’t want any X-rays”. If we sit back and think for a minute, what would the doctor say when a patient shows up with a broken arm and said “Doc, I want you to fix my arm but I don’t want you to take an X-ray”.
