DrugBuyers.Com: Do dentists seem to try to find everything wrong?

Based on my own experiences and some that have posted on another thread regarding problems with dental school that I am currently using, I have found a lot of dentists try to find all possible problems when you come to have one or two problems fixed.

I might not have an abcessed tooth that is still not fixed that might have been caused by the dentist insisting that I needed a root canal before fitting me for a corwn (deliberately misspelled for once to get by DB's censor).

I have had several of these corwns over the course of the years and this one chain I used because they had a cupon in the phone book for a corwn special seemed to push root canals whether you need them or not once you were in the dental chair. Thanks to this policy, I have spent $1300 for root canal, cowrn, and another $ 500.00 to repair the tooth after it abcessed three years after the work was originally done. And the tooth is STILL not fixed. It will probably have to be pulled. That will cost $17.00 at this school.

Without the other corwns having had root canals, I have had no problem with them.

I see ads for a low ball price on corwns and then they charge you for getting you in on an emergency basis. That also happened with this dental chain. Thing is, I never asked to be treated as an emergency patient. I was charged an extra $65.00 for this.

When I go to my doctor, I am lucky if he will look at two problems in one visit. He certainly does not try to find everything wrong with me.

This does NOT apply to the good dentists who do not employee bait and switch practices or other questionable practices like 'emergency fees' unless the patient is fully informed about things like emergency fees.

Most people do not have any dental insurance and if they do, it is probably not that good. Yet dentists seem bent on extracting as much from me as possible-including money.

Even this famous dental school has questionable practices. I was told a corwn was $303. I was not informed of that famous money maker-the build up until three visits later.

I thought that dental schools were places that you paid just for the materials and maybe an administration fee. These future dentists need people to work on and if this school does not clean up its act, soon all that will come there after enough people find out that it is a several month wait and the prices are not that great-espiecally if you shop around in a major city which this school is located in.

The only patients that this school will eventually get is the homeless and from social services. Which would you want to work on? A clean person who takes care of himself or the bottom of the ladder who dwell the city streets?

Feel free to comment or share your own horror story about dentists. And if there are any dentists or anyone else that wants to defend these questionable practices, I believe in both sides having equal time.

BTW: The dental school got me in the endo unit (the department that specializes in root canals the next day after I was evaluated to see if I needed enough dental work to justify being accepted as a regular patient. The dentist doing the endo work tore up the corwn over the abcessed tooth and told me that I would need a new one. I thought that I would just get assigned a dental student and get a new corwn. I found out after the endo work was done that I was not a regular patient but had been accepted on an emergency basis and was not entitled to further services. That was fine but they destroyed my corwn. All I wanted was them to make me a new one which I would pay for. It took the department that intervenes for people to get things strightend out to get me an appointment for a new corwn and just before I was to get my cowrn fitting, I noticed that the gun above the toth that had been worked on had now receded exposing part of the toth above the gum line .

Now I was given a SECOND re-eveluation and this time was accepted as a regular patient. This time, I was told I needed several existing corwns replaced, bottom left wisdom teeht extracted and I had a cavity that needed filled. How come they missed all that in the first evaluation and said that I did not need enough dental work to keep a student busy?

One last thing. The dragon lady that guards the entrance to the endo unit happily took my credit card to pay for the work and when I called a few days later about the receded gumn could have cared less and said its not our problem. I go on October 22 back to the eno department to see if they can clean up their mess or if the toth gets pulled. At least this vist is free.

Maybe they will try to sell me some snake oil while I am there. They did not even give me antibiotics for the root canal work.

PM if you want the name of the school so you can avoid it if you live in Texas.