Choosing the perfect Dentist!
Ever thought about changing your dentist? Ever tried to look for a dentist near your work but failed miserably to understand which one is actually good and end up choosing the best looking waiting room? Ever wondered how to actually filter all those dentist reviews? Particularly if you live in Europe you must have noticed that there is a dentist everywhere you go. There is a boom of dental schools in Europe. It will be one of last profession to be conquered by robots until the final machine apocalypse turns us all into pathetic, dysfunctional John Connors.
This is good news though. Since the market is clearly over supplied there is a good chance that your newly formed dentist with only a few years of experience might have already done more post graduations and specializations than the old dentists stuck in time. They need to be on top of the game and the only way to do this is by doing courses after courses which is not a bad thing for their future end consumers – you!
However, it also means that many dentists try to run a business with less and less patients so the business will inevitably suffer therefore the investment in the (necessary) expensive equipment and materials and staff will be scarce.
So…..to the point.
How can you tell if your new dentist is actually on the front end of the best quality dentistry possible? No matter how hard you try to find good reviews or gather information about a practice in the end of the day the truth is that you can’t trust any of that. What this means is… People are not coded to understand what happen to them at a dentist visit. Our perception as patients is frankly very poor. Sure you have subjective factors of accountability like how nice was the dentist or the staff, or how expensive it was, how long did you wait, was the dentist gentle, caring, informative, did you feel any discomfort. These are all subjective metrics which WILL NOT have any predictive value on the overhaul quality of the treatment provided. It is so easy to trick patients into thinking that they had an excellent treatment because it is easy to manipulate all the subjective factors around the them and actually provide treatments with very poor prognosis (i.e. won’t last long). Nowadays restorative treatment and root canal treatments are meant to last decades to come. But they have to be done properly. Inevitably this requires skill, time, equipment, working with expensive laboratories, etc. Which are all metrics that one as a patient doesn’t have a clue. Unless you are well versed in the dental sciences there is no way that you can know if you are receiving the best treatment even if your experience is painless, comfortable, pleasant, cheap, etc.
But fear not! The following practical list of features to look for comes to the rescue. By all means this list could be much longer but I believe that if your dentist can provide a little bit on all these areas than you are more likely to be in good hands.
These are the factors you should be looking for:
PORTFOLIO | RUBBER DAM | OPTICS | STATS
PORTFOLIO
Self-explanatory I believe. The best restorative dentists will have a portfolio of cases to show in form of photographs. The other dentist that specialize in surgery or root canal treatments will have their portfolio as well but definitely they are not for the common person to look at. So a dentist that proudly displays her portfolio of cases will show an appropriate mindset. Of someone who is always trying to do better and keep up with the state of the art techniques. Particularly if they are not afraid to show the cases that didn’t go very well. If you find a dentist with a reasonable portfolio of successes that is willing to share not so great results as well. Then surely you are in good hands.
RUBBERDAM
This is unknown for most people but basically consists of a rubber sheet that is placed around 1 or several teeth in order for the dentist to perform specific treatments with those teeth isolated from saliva or any other contaminants. Please note that this is only for Restorative dentistry as fillings. Sometimes it is very difficult to place this and other times impossible but a good dentist will have it available and will not hesitate to use it if you request it. Furthermore, whilst this is a bit of an optional thing when doing fillings (restorations) it IS COMPULSORY for a root canal treatment. A root canal treatment performing dentist MUST use this at all times. If she doesn’t…say goodbye, thank you very much and walk away.
OPTICS
In this day and age, it is not acceptable for a proper dentist not to have some form of magnification. Not many people know this but the detail dentist’s work with is down to less than half a millimeter. The margins they have to prepare and the root canals they have to find, it is all very tinny and microscopic. A god dentist will use some form of loupes to help her see what the naked eye can only imagine. It is not a subjective thing. Dentists who use magnification will perform better. That is a fact. In addition, some of them might even use a big microscope. Yes, that is correct. Dentist should use these dental microscopes, particularly in root canal treatments. Trust me on this one. If a dentist is doing a root canal treatment on a molar tooth without having access to a microscope…don’t let it happen. They might not need it at all times sure. But when difficulties arise they better have one at hand.
STATS
Always ask for the dentists’ own statistics. Dentists know a lot, read a lot and most of the time are very comfortable giving you statistical proof of some technique they researched and implemented. Everyone can give statistics of the probability of a treatment as reported by the scientific community or other professionals. However, what about the dentist’s own probabilities and success? Bear in mind that a dentist needs to try new techniques and materials every day. That is fine and desirable. But they should also provide you with an overhaul idea of how successful their treatments have been. This is not something that a junior dentist will have in abundance of course but they can still provide you with a roughly idea of how their own experience has been with a specific treatment. For example: how many years does an onlay last (material resistance wise); is the fillings system giving any cosmetic problems; are any of the implants system they use failing; etc. What you also want with this is merely to access subjectively if the dentist will not give you a 100% success rate in everything. As a matter of fact, there is no such thing a 100% success rate – this merely means that for a certain treatment it will not work in all the patients that receive that treatment. If the dentist does tell you that all will be fine and it all is wonderful and colorful and baby pandas will wait for you in heaven….. just get the hell out of there!