Learn How To Avoid The Seven Threats To A Beautiful Smile: Part 3

If you were with us for the last two issues, you’ll recall Threat #1 to your dental health was Neglect, either by you or your dentist, and Threat #2 was Under-treatment.

This month we’re discussing Threat #3, Over-treatment.  

How does a dentist over-treat a patient? By not getting clear on exactly what the patient wants.

For example, let’s say a patient walks into the dentist’s office and tells her, “I want a whiter, brighter, pretty smile.”  

A dentist’s first task would be to carefully evaluate the current health of her patient’s teeth, observing the position of each tooth, look, color, shape and overall condition.

Once those steps are complete, the dentist would likely move on to discussing possible treatments with the patient including selectively straightening specific teeth and then bleaching all of them. 

Now, that could be a relatively simple thing to do.  It would not require a lot of dental care and could range from $1,000.00 to $2,000.00 from start to finish.

Over-treatment rears its ugly head when the dentist doesn’t get clear on the fact that this is  ALL the patient  REALLY wants.   Instead they assume the patient is looking for, or should be looking for, “the perfect smile.”  

Now, over-treatment is not nearly as risky to your health as the others we’ll cover, but it does put the strong-arm on your wallet.

Moral of the story? Get clear on what you want then make sure your dentist is reading from the same page.

Tune in next week for the most common dental threat of all!