Dental shoppers will find a myriad of diagnoses from one dentist to the next. Does this mean you are being oversold? Not necessarily. So what to believe? The bottom line is that many dentists only “know what they know.” Dental school teaches the basics to perform dentistry. Continuing education and advanced dentistry courses train the dentist to become “physicians of the mouth.” William Dickerson, DDS, founder of the Las Vegas Institute for Advanced Dentistry states, “For the dentist who has not been trained in comprehensive ‘mouth doctor’ dentistry, they cannot diagnose what they cannot see. The less they know the more everything seems normal. This is like the physician who cannot diagnose a specific disease because he hasn’t been trained to know the symptoms that one who is trained would easily recognize.”
It is our obligation as dentists to diagnose the condition, whether or not we are trained to treat it. Many dentists don’t diagnose pathological conditions because they would not know how to treat them. Every dentist should diagnose a patient’s oral condition as if it were their own and refer to the appropriate specialist trained to treat the condition.
Restoring a person’s oral health to optimal condition can include several options from periodontal (gum) care, orthodontics (braces), restorations (fillings or crowns), or a combination of these. The symptoms of oral disease can include active decay, periodontal disease, occlusal disease (misaligned bite), oral cancer or other pathological problems. Comprehensive treatment will include an assessment of all of the above. Your dentist should perform an oral cancer exam and evaluate systemic conditions such as headaches and jaw or neck pain in assessing the overall condition of your oral health. For example, the first step to beginning treatment of a bite condition is to determine if the symptoms are bite related.
Joel S. Miller, DMD, MAGD has a comprehensive restorative and neuromuscular dental practice here in Valencia. You can contact the office for more information at 661-257-5858 or visit his website at www.valenciasmiles.com .