dental care

The ethics of a fair and honest treatment plan

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An interesting article titled “The ethics of presenting a fair and honest treatment plan,” is written by Marvin Elwood Rice, appearing in JADA, April 2017, vol. 148, issue 4. The article discusses a dentist who has had numerous occasions in which a relative, past patient, or a new patient has called for a second opinion because of what another dentist has shown them on the oral camera screen. These are patients who take care of their teeth and are familiar with their conditions. In each instance, the patient was in a panic because the dentist enlarged his or her teeth on the overhead screen and pointed to a dark developmental groove or a stained pit and tried to convince the patient that they had a cracked tooth and needed a crown or that the stained areas were active carious lesions and they … Read more

How to Cope with Dental Fear

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An interesting article titled “Coping skills for facing dental fears” appears in the February 2017, issue of JADA, vol. 148, issue 2. The article discusses some things you can do if you are afraid of the dentist to help you get through the entire appointment. The first thing the article suggests is to speak up and let the office and dentist know you have dental fear. You can address any coping skills you have used in the past and the dental team may suggest new coping skills that can be tried. You ask the dentist to talk you through what is going to be done for your treatment prior to him or her doing it to help further put your mind at ease. If you need to take a break during treatment you can agree on a signal to use … Read more

Going to the Virtual Beach Improves Dental Experiences

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For patients at a dental practice in Devon, England, Virtual Reality encounters in the dental chair can result in demonstrably better experiences. A team of researchers at the Universities of Plymouth, Exeter and Birmingham worked with Torrington Dental Practice in Devon to find out whether virtual experiences could improve the patient’s experience during routine dental procedures such as teeth removal. Patients, who agreed to take part in the study were randomly allocated to one of three conditions: a) standard care , b) a virtual walk around Wembury beach in Devon or c) a walk around an anonymous virtual reality city. Results found that those who ‘walked’ around Wembury beach were less anxious, experienced less pain, and had more positive recollections of their treatment when compared to those in the standard care condition. These benefits were not found for those who walked … Read more

Tips to Afford Quality Dental Care

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I was recently alerted to a post on thesimpledollar.com talking about how to afford quality dental care. The link for this post is at http://www.thesimpledollar.com/how-to-afford-quality-dental-care/. The article is written by Chris Sirico and was last updated on June 15, 2017. The article goes into some of the costs for common dental procedures and what you can do if you don’t have insurance. The article also goes into HSAs/FSAs, dental credit cards, dental financing, dental savings plans, dental insurance, and cosmetic dentistry. The article provides a very nice chart about the average cost for various dental procedures with and without insurance. For example the average cost of removing a single wisdom tooth is $416 without insurance and has an average cost of $250 to $750 if you have insurance. As another example the average cost of a surgical tooth extraction is $401 … Read more

Take Me Out! A Brief Guide to Tooth Extraction – Infographic

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Extraction is usually the agreed upon option for teeth which have become damaged or decayed where they are no longer reparable. Extraction is also worth considering if your mouth is overcrowded or to reduce the risk of infection if your immune system has been compromised from receiving chemotherapy or an organ transplant. Tooth extraction or tooth removal is generally considered safe and any respectable dentist will be able to put the patient at ease prior to surgery. Patients who are especially apprehensive will be given a sedative to ease their nerves before the dentist administers anesthetic to the area surrounding the tooth that will be extracted. The entire procedure is carried out with great care and intricacy by a dental professional who considers the patient’s health a priority, so you can rest assured that the entire operation will be seamless. Prior to … Read more