[santaclause33]

Dentists are often crooks.

When I was younger, my parents had to change insurance plans, so I got a new dentist. In the first visit, he takes a quick look at my mouth (with no tools, mind you) and confidently says I had 8 cavities that need drilling ASAP.

My previous dentist mentioned no such thing, so my mom took me back to him for a second opinion. He used tools to check, then told us the other dentist was full of shit and that this was surprisingly common.

The new dentist would have drilled 8 healthy teeth out of greed.

[peckrob]

This happened to my wife when we moved to a new city. We needed a new dentists, and chose one based on Angie's List reviews.

She'd never had a cavity in her life and goes in for a routine cleaning. The guy said she had SIX cavities that needed drilling immediately (wanted to do it that afternoon) and needed a root canal and crown on one of her back teeth. And of course had generous financing options for the amount that this would go over our dental coverage (which he assumed we would be blowing all at once).

She left there in tears and came home.

It sounded like a crock, so we asked at our workplaces and chose a different dentist to get a second opinion. He looks around in her mouth for a few minutes and says the the other guy is crazy, she has one area that just needs to be watched but everything else looked fine. Even said her teeth were in outstanding shape.

If something seems off with any health-related diagnosis, always get a second opinion.

[Zelphyr]

I had to spend over $6000 last year to get an implant because I let a crook dentist do a root canal when he should have referred me to an endodontist. The endodontist that I eventually hat to go to (after infection had set up) who tried to save the tooth was pulling nasty black stuff out of it that the crook had shoved in. He said that was common amongst dentists "who like to cut corners".

That same crook dentist talked me into a gold crown on what turned out to be a wisdom tooth that was supposedly removed 20 years prior (they extracted the other three but apparently decided to save time and leave one in). My dentist now still shakes his head as to why anyone would have recommended a gold crown over extraction of that tooth.

I don't know if there is a way to find quality dentists but I'm realizing that this country (US) is rife with crook dentists.

[labster]

I hope she told the new insurance company about this. Insurance companies protect us from greed in the medical and dental industries. And then they add their own greed on top of it. But they are really the best protection against unnecessary procedures in a field that most of us cannot understand.

Have a similar story here. Went to a family friend who was a dentist, until he sold his practice. The new dentist wanted to do a $600 procedure every six months like clockwork. And I didn't have insurance at the time, so the charges really added up. I wised up after a couple times and switched to a new dentist who isn't in the "drill baby drill" contingent. My oral health has been just fine.

[chrramirez]

Same happened to me, but the second dentist told I had 16 cavities. That was just 3-4 months after a dentist told I had none.

[schwap]

1/3 == "often"?