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Dentists are pulling ‘healthy’ and treatable teeth to profit from implants, experts warn (www.newsfromthestates.com)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 78 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Yes, and mechanics are "fixing" perfectly fine cars out there. AC technicians are telling people they need to replace their entire system when a $30 capacitor blows. Lawyers are charging people for many hours they didn't work.

Welcome to the wonderful world of getting ripped off!

PS: have you ever played Eve Online? You'll never get ripped off there. Never.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

PS: have you ever played Eve Online? You'll never get ripped off there. Never.

Is that an irony? I really can't tell..

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I haven't played it, but I have a special place in my heart for Eve Online. It has the type of cartoonishly evil scams you just don't see anymore. For example, centuries past, a common scam was for people to set up fake banks. Get people to deposit money at your fake bank, then disappear into the night one day. Today, an era where it's a lot harder to just up and disappear, this type of scam is far less common.

But not in Eve! A few years ago there was a massive scammer who got a bunch of people to put all their money in his bank offering suspiciously high interest rates. The bank collected a huge amount of money. Then one day the bank operator just loaded all the cash into his spaceship and flew off into space! It would be like if Wells Fargo went bankrupt because the CEO just absconded to Switzerland with all the bank's holdings one night.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

There’s a great Down the Rabbit Hole on EVE drama!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

lol wasn’t Eve online one of the biggest takeovers in a game ever? Not to mention people scammed the shit out of other players.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

Unless the rules have changed, scamming players wasn't only allowed but actively encouraged. The theme of the game is unregulated hyper space capitalism where players have little to no built-in protection from each other.

Groups can hide bases in space and players from rival groups would attempt to join up in order to find the coordinates and the best times to attack. Sometimes going as far as hanging out with the other players irl to gain their trust.

Market traders would claim to be running mutual funds that you could buy into and receive huge returns when in reality it was a Ponzi scheme.

Players would offer high paying contracts to ship an item to a player owned base. Once another player accepted the contract they'd be denied entry to the base forcing them to fail the contract and pay a cancellation fee.

[–] [email protected] 61 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Growing up I had two molars removed to make room for my teeth to move backward with braces. The orthodontist said my teeth were too big for my mouth and that I needed the extra space. Literally every dentist I've been to over the 30 years since then has asked why I didn't have those molars. I always tell them, and they always say it doesn't make sense. I'm guessing my family got "up-sold."

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Fuck... That's terrifying.

I've discussed this with my wife. If any dentist tell us our daughter needs teeth removed we're getting a 2nd and maybe a 3rd opinion.

[–] Cethin 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

If you go this route, I wouldn't tell them what the others said. If they don't agree then somethings wrong. If you tell them they might just agree because they may be the ones who make more money.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

That’s what I had planned in my head.

If they don’t discover on their own that some tooth needs to come out, it probably doesn’t need to come out.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

I was going to skip this response because it's controversial and scientifically uncertain (as a scientist in a previous incarnation, but seem to have reasonable evidence, look at it yourself), but screw it, I feel your pain, downvote me. Given preamble...

It seems likely that soft foods in the developmental stage of the jaw cause the orthodontic issues common to current first world countries. It may be possible to remedy this with straight up chewing gum at around age 8, but preferably use actual whole food that requires chewing, basically jaw development, and hence teeth positioning requires work. Wish I knew it earlier...

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 week ago

This has been going on for awhile. My wife was estatic with my familys dentist because he was so honestly concerned about oral health over profit. He retired this year though :(

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

Honestly, unless this tooth repair gel thing works and becomes available soon, I'd rather have some of my teeth replaced with implants.

I've asked my dentist "can we just skip the endless filling replacements, caps, crowns, and eventual implants and just go right to implants?"

They always say no, and I ask is there a reason why "natural teeth" with fillings/caps/crowns are better than implants - they reply with "But it's your teeth! They'll last a long time before needing implants!"

Yeah, so I'll need implants eventually, can't I just get them now before I put more fillings, caps, crowns, and eventual implants? Ain't nobody got time for that.

"but your natural teeth will last a long time!"

Yeah, but they ain't so natural after 5 procedures, and I'd rather avoid the ha$$le and just get the implants now instead of implants and a lifetime of repairs.

They always say no, and it's probably because they make way more money fixing bad teeth than replacing it with something permanent

EDIT

Thank you everyone!

I've gotten better answers here than from my dentist, so thank you everyone for educating me on the reasons why.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Implants aren't nearly as good as real teeth from a sensation perspective. If you can keep as much of the real ones as you can, do.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Idk my father got a set of titanium chompers, he eats ice as a snack now.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Implants go bad too. What do you do after an implant goes bad? I bet your options would be very limited then.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I was under the impression swapping out an implant was far easier than installing the system.

And I'm also talking about teeth that have been repeatedly drilled, capped, crowns etc - not a normal, healthy tooth.

These teeth are basically anchors for crowns, at what point is a new implant better than a chiseled out tooth?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 week ago

Implants can fail at the implant/bone interface. You have limited amounts of bone in the jaw.

I'm not a dentist or surgeon, but I have an education in biomedical engineering. With knee and hip implants, for example, a major consideration is the health and longevity of the underlying bone.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I have about 9 crowns currently, and my wife is a dental assistant with implant and surgery experience. I asked about this one time and got this explanation.

Implants are a highly invasive, long, and expensive process, like over 10k each expensive, and months of procedures and recovery. Granted, usually implants aren't done to healthy teeth, but they usually have to build up the bone material after extracting the tooth and let that heal, drill into the bone and set the post then let that heal, then fit the implant and adjust everything because your teeth have been moving while it's been healing.
One of the reasons the dentist doesn't want to just pull a tooth and do an implant is the even when root canaled, that tooth is a better support than the implant post would be, and the implant is a lot more work.

The process of fillings, then crown, then root canal and crown don't usually happen in sequence like that, and if you do preventative maintenance you can keep a tooth with a filling from ever needing to be crowned or root canal'd

You wanna know what's a hell of a lot cheaper and easier than getting any dental work? Flossing and brushing!

I have hated flossing my entire life because it hurts my fingers to wrap the floss enough not to slide, but a couple months back I discovered I could tie a figure 8 knot and make a loop to pull tension on and now find i can't stand the feeling of anything in-between my teeth so I end up flossing after every meal.

Moral of the story is: floss and brush your teeth and you won't need to worry about crowns or implants. Always before bed and especially after anything with sugar or starches

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

While flossing and brushing are definitely best practice, they absolutely do not guarantee never getting cavities.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

I got a little floss holder, it has drastically changed my willingness to floss. (I think it's "E-Z Floss".) I wish any dentist had ever recommended that.

But thanks for the info about implants, I didn't know that process at all. My grandfather used to say he wished he'd just gotten dentures.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

IDK how these implants work or if she had them but my mom had a bunch of teeth taken out and her jaw started dissolving because there were no teeth there and it was expensive for her to get it straightened out.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

Any medict professional caught with this abuse for an extra buck should automatically get a 20 years jail sentence. Fuck them, throw away the key

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I have a broken molar on my left side and I've been dealing with it for years because I couldn't afford to have all 8 teeth removed that the dentist wanted to pull because I lost a corner of one molar.
If was explained to me that without that one tooth, the teeth on either side of it would move to fill the gap and would cause other problems, and without the teeth on the bottom the teeth on top would start to drop down and cause more problems, so if i wanted that one tooth fixed I'd need to pay thousands of dollars to get all the teeth on my left side pulled.
Being the gullible idiot I am, I trusted the medical professional and decided that if it had to be done that way, I'd just have to live with it the way it was because I didn't have thousands of dollars to pay for the surgery and my job at the time didn't offer dental.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Get a second opinion. You could probably get a single implant to replace the broken molar.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

I'd have gotten him to write up a cost quote and taken it to the dental association. That was utter bullshit he fed you.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

Damn is no industry safe to use these days?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

When dental care started being covered here suddenly my parents had a bunch of urgent issues. The guy is bit of a diva too. He absolutely will not acknowledge the patients at all who not scheduled for procedure with him. Not even a "hi" or anything. Dentists are a weird bunch.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

Maybe I just know too many dentists, but there is a certain scammy personality that it unfortunately seems to attract. There also always seems to be weird sexual misconduct in all the private practices with hygienists... but that's it's own topic.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Highest suicide rate of the professions, as I heard (happy to be corrected)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

I went in for a root canal on a painful tooth in the top of my mouth. When I got there I learned they planned to pull one from the other side where there was no pain. I told them I didn't think it was right, and then they pulled up my files and assured me it was right and we went ahead. But I still suspect it was unnecessary and I lost a perfectly good tooth

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Makes me appreciate my dentist. He's a good dude.