Timing Timing Timing

Good timing with your health can save you a lot of suffering and expense. This graph is a result of gathering information about fees for various procedures in dental offices in the mountain area. It will help illustrate this warning very well.

"Fissures" are very deep and narrow grooves on the tops and sides of mostly posterior teeth. It had been stated that 95% of cavities occurred at the bottom of these grooves because a patient's toothbrush can't even reach the bottom of the fissure to clean it sufficiently. That's the simplistic explanation but nevertheless the recommendation of choice is to prepare the fissured groove properly and place a "sealant" in it to help prevent dental decay from occurring there. In the 10th percentile of "mountain" dental offices a "sealant" may cost $28.00.

Now ,to explain why "timing" can save so much money. With an instrument that uses infra red laser to diagnose when the dental decay process has gone from the inner part of the fissure and penetrate into the inner part of the tooth called the Dentin. If the diagnosis of the fissured groove takes place after this perforation has taken place, it is now called a cavity and the treatment of choice is now NOT a sealant but either a silver amalgam filling or a composite filling. The time it takes to progress from an un-decayed fissure to one with dental decay is not predictable. It may take years, months,weeks or days, but after it has entered the dentin one of the types of filling needs to be done as soon as possible since once dental decay has entered the dentin it begins to get larger and deeper more rapidly.

There also is a fee schedule for one surface silver amalgams and one surface composites. A simple one surface silver filling will cost about $78 and a one surface composite would be about $97. If the dental decay is undetected before it gets infection into the nerve, the cost of a root canal on a molar is about $650 but will also need a $750 crown. So a sealant of $28 could be $97 and could be $1400 and "timing" is the variable.

$28-----$97------$1400-----?

Most people's teeth will not have any dental decay in them when they are first formed. With the effectiveness of Caries management by Risk Assessment nowadays, it is possible for anyone to keep a tooth free from dental decay for a lifetime. This is not a one time - good forever fantasy, but a patient can know ahead of time the risks that he may face throughout life and do what it takes to have excellent "risk management" and avoid all dental decay. This will be literally cost tens of thousands of dollars less expensive over a lifetime for the average person. This is not conjecture. After 35 years of "drill and fill" dentistry, I can also say, with total confidence from experience, it can cost many people tens of thousands of dollars to care for their teeth throughout a lifetime.

So, when have you chosen to be the last day to have a cavity? If it is left to later, as one of my good friends did ,it may cost you $30 thousand to $40 thousand dollars. If it happens earlier in your life, the unnecessary expense can be avoided.....finally. As I mentioned, it may be only a matter of days of waiting too long to add hundreds of dollars to the dental bill for a child who originally only needed some sealants, or only needed to have a "cure" and "prevention" program initiated. These hundreds of dollars can quickly turn into thousands or tens of thousand of dollars as the years go by.

If the mother is the primary source of the child's Dental Caries disease and the best recommendations of experts is to help the mother avoid this transmission to her children by curing and preventing the disase in her mouth promptly, it could be multiples of thousands of dollars saved even while the children are at home! This is very close to me also. My own mother had a particularly virulent case of Dental Caries disease and me and all of my brothers and sisters had terrible dental decay as children, teenagers and adults. I estimated that before a professor at my dental school taught me "Primary" dentistry, the costs of silver fillings, resins and gold work adjusted to today's prices, was an equivalent of over $20,000 myself.

So, as a family shows interest in putting a stop to any more of this useless and financial wasteful dental decay trap, I see mothers first, then fathers and then around the family with the initial "Risk Factor Assessment" and then the "Cariscreen" meter reading.

There is always a self assessment each person makes as to whether he needs this and it is worthwhile to make the small effort in time and expense to accomplish "be cavity-free for life."

Can I offer some insights? The accuracy of the risk assessments and also the CariScreen ATP meter reading of your biofilm is easy for those who have recently had dental decay. But, there are some warnings I need to share with those who seem to be "not" having cavities.

1. They may have "active" Dental Caries disease but the early damages have not reached the stage that they are clinically detectable yet. There could be 90% of a person's cavities in this range for months or years before the cavities are "clinically detected". This type of patient will think they don't need any treatment or prevention, but our recommendation is to go through Dental Caries treatment and Prevention until the ATP meter and the Risk assessments find him at "Low Risk" ("Low Risk" is relatively safe but still needs a strict "prevention" treatment with 3 or 6 month periodic risk assessments and screenings since, without warning a seemingly small change in medications, early or undetected illness, life stressors or dietary change the "balance" they could find themselves "at risk" or worse, "extreme risk" )."AT Risk" usually has active Dental Caries and needs the full treatment followed by a lifetime of "prevention' with periodic checks.

2. A patient could be found at a point where they do NOT have active Dental Caries disease and there are not any areas of damage from the disease. These people could have been free from presence of dental cavities for a year, or decades of years. They will be tempted to fall into a false sense of security that somehow they are immune to cavities. These are the cases that can bring the greatest heartbreak. Even these....we don't have cavities....people will benefit from having the risk assessment and Cariscreen ATP meter regularly. It just doesn't seem logical to them until they realize that it's not just poor diet or poor oral hygiene that can throw a person into AT Risk or Extreme risk quickly and without warning.

"Life stressors" such as even an emotional challenge with a spouse or child, losing a job or even threat of losing a job, leaving home for the first time an automobile accident or illness of a loved one or even a pet, etc can cause enough stress to throw the Dental Caries balance off and the patient could quickly be At risk. As simple as just being on a new medication whether for serious illness or injury or not or temporarily or for longer term, can throw a person off balance and into "at risk" or "extreme risk". A significant number of people have undiagnosed diabetes or heartdisease. Even an "undiagnosed" disease can affect the "balance" and throw a person into "at risk" without warning. So, I guess nobody can relax, even the ones with the best history.

THE KEY TO SAFETY IS THE REGULAR RISK ASSESSMENT AND CARISCREEN METER READING REGULARLY!!!

Benefitting from the unique and valuable service from your CureDontist is not "leaving" or being disloyal to your "dentist" any more than seeing any other specialist in dentistry or medicine. I, as a CureDontist won't be doing "procedures" or fillings so I am really not in competition with your already chosen reparative 'dentist'. I concentrate on Cure and Prevention (Risk Management). If your dentist is interested in offering the benefits of the total "Patients' Own wellness association" he is more than welcome to join with us. It would be ideal if all dentists were advocates and active members of Patients' Own wellness since it starts with "be cavity-free for life and adds "Optimal general health". If you have any questions, please feel free to call: 801 643-1812 or email me at: www.clifford194070@gmail.com or www.PatientsOwn@hotmail.com. I look forward to meeting you some day soon.