Reader’s Digest: “Four months, 50,000 miles and 50 exams later, I concluded that going to the dentist is nothing to smile about. Dentistry is a stunningly inexact science. Even expecting that different dentists would have different, yet valid, opinions did not prepare me for the astounding variation in diagnoses I received. Some wanted only $500 to bring me up to good dental health. Others wanted ten, 20, even 50 times that amount. Surely they could not all be right.”
My wife’s new dentists declared, after a lengthy exam, that she’d found ten cavities that needed immediate correction. We found this, odd, to the say the least, because as children of the late 1970s, neither of us had ever had a cavity. Is it even possible to go from zero cavities to 10? The article goes on to explain that “the number of children with cavities in their permanent teeth dropped by more than half between the early 1970s and early 1990s. Meanwhile the population of dentists has grown by 50 percent.” Needless to say, my wife has an appointment with another dentist for a second opinion.
Its sad to think increased competition for a smaller and smaller consumer base may be driving dentists to dishonesty. Is dishonest dentistry a trend? Have you noticed a decline in honesty?