I am also in the PNW and it sounds like we go to the same dentist or, at a minimum, they are in the same "how to make the most money off your patients" group. It's really frustrating. How do you get legitimate dental care without it being like a spa or plastic surgery office? Dental care for health and to keep your teeth?
@Metalcat Any suggestions you can offer?
Lol @ oral DNA testing.
Up to that point I was giving this clinic the benefit of the doubt, but fuck that noise.
The reason I was giving the benefit of the doubt is because "supervised neglect" is actually really common among older dentists, so it's extremely common that a new dentist will take over someone's care and legit find 5 figures worth of urgent work to do.
My job was to help dentists frame this as high quality service, not fraud.
It's a very, very tough sell since dental neglect is generally painless and doesn't cause problems until it's way too late and no one realizes how much prevention was missed along the way.
Anyhoo, point being, going to a new dentist and suddenly requiring a ton of work on your gums is common. My DH was a diligent flosser and got cleanings every 6 months for a decade. His dad was a dentist, he cared greatly about oral hygiene. Only, his lovely hygienist whom he adored because she caused no pain was never cleaning below his gums, which means she was never actually cleaning his teeth.
He had the gum health of a homeless drug addict. It took 9 hours and 4 surgeries to remediate the problem and 8 years later he just had to have one of those teeth pulled 2 weeks ago because it was too late for that one, even though it took 8 years for it to fail, it was doomed 8 years ago.
His dentist would have looked at his x-rays every year and had he bothered looking for it would have detected the shelves of calcified bacteria colonizing his tooth roots and destroying the jaw bone.
Fucking supervised neglect.
And yet, it's the neglectful dentists that people like and trust most.
So yeah, I was willing to give your new dentist the benefit of the doubt but DNA testing?? Fuck the fuck off with that bullshit.
I would definitely seek a second opinion at least.
My rule of thumb with dentists is to give them the benefit of the doubt when it comes to treatment, dentists under recommend treatment way more than they over recommend treatment because they're so conflict averse and it actually stresses them out to even have to recommend expensive treatment.
Also, fun fact, basic fillings are among the most profitable things dentists can do, so they would much rather tell everyone all day that they only need a few fillings than have to broach more expensive treatment.
Beware of diagnostics though. Not a lot of tech in dentistry actually adds that much in terms of diagnostic value. Most diagnostic tests in dentistry are just really good sales tools to demonstrate to patients why they need treatment, because again, dentists aren't terribly comfortable recommending treatment, so a test that shows that something should be done is a huge sales benefit.
The scammy/chiro model dentists I've seen (and refused to work with) tend to lean heavily on their diagnostic bells and whistles.
In any field of medicine, if you see an abnormally high emphasis on "advanced" testing that isn't industry standard, it's good to question what's more probable, that this practitioner is ahead of the curve and others are just failing to adopt truly important tech? Or that they are either scammy themselves or naive and fell for a scammy sales pitch?
