Who can you trust when it comes to your dental health?

The biggest influence on feeding the public a steady diet of mis-information are the large pharmaceutical/medical device companies.  When their profits depend on selling drugs or products then they will manipulate the studies, the doctors and the government however they can to convince the public that taking a pill or using their product is a much better option than other proven alternatives.

Profits also drive these companies to hold educational seminars and weekend “mini residencies” where they teach general practitioners to perform complex procedures that only specialists are qualified to perform.  Their logic is that the more doctors they have in their pipeline the more product they can sell.  So they tailor make these seminars to make the general practitioners believe that placing dental implants or doing gum grafts or treating periodontal disease are very profitable procedures that can easily be done.  They give them a false sense of security and then unleash them on the unsuspecting public.

So who can you trust?
When I was going through my training we had a very rigorous course called literature review.  What they trained us to do in this class was to read published studies, and breakdown the data and analyse it ourselves to conclude if the results were really true, or if the study was flawed (or influenced).  So we became pretty good at deciphering between junk science and real science.  Unfortunately most of the public (or general practitioners) does that have this skill set so they must rely on experts to guide them through this process.  But who is an experts and who is not?  Expertise is not something that develops over night or over a couple of weekends.  It is a combination of rigorous structured training, and a devotion to mastery of the subject.

Here are some basic rules of thumb for finding a real expert:

• For most complex dental issues such as bone grafts, gum grafts or dental implants  you should seek the advice of a specialist such as a periodontist.  You would never allow your family physician to take out your appendix, nor should you allow your general dentist do complex surgery on you. Try to seek out the masters in the field.  Masters are those that have practiced their craft at least 10,000 hours.
  
• Ask specific questions about your doctor, such as the  length of time in practice, number of procedures that they perform, their training, hours of continuing education they take etc.  You want to find out how devoted they are and where they are getting their information from. The more you know about your doctor the better.
  
• Generally doctors that offer the lowest price on something then they are working on volume.  Do you want to be part of an assembly line?  Dentistry and medicine do not lend themselves to mass production.  The quality and the outcomes ALWAYS suffer.
  
• Lastly you want to see a doctor that takes their time with you and listens to your concerns and carefully evaluates you.  You also want to see that they can offer you multiple options and work with your needs.  If they are dismissive or rushed when they see you then they don’t have your best interest at heart.

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