• Dental Phobia Support

    Welcome! This is an online support group for anyone who is has a severe fear of the dentist or dental treatment. Please note that this is NOT a general dental problems or health anxiety forum! You can find a list of them here.

    Register now to access all the features of the forum.

visited FOUR dentists in 2 months with ALL different comments for my teeth

K

kenny1999

Junior member
Joined
Mar 16, 2015
Messages
16
I don't want to write too long to bore people I try to highlight the key points. I have visited four dentists because of worrying of periodontitis and teeth loss (I am 30 and was super lazy, I didn't go for scaling for many years and didn't even brush once a day, I didn't use floss until recent months)

The first dentist's comment (General dentist): Gum recession, teeth loss is more likely in the future, scaling is required. Get out of here.

The second dentist's comment (Professional periodontist, 20 years experience):
Gum recession is not obvious, all of your teeth is tightly fixed in place. SERIOUS gum ''inflammation'', Some pocket depth is 7mm, Deep cleaning treatment is necessary, but not urgent. You can consider first for some months. Everything else is fine.

The third dentist's comment (General dentist, fresh graduate);
You don't really need to spend thousands of bucks for deep cleaning recommended by the periodontist, you only need surface/simple scaling. You don't have much gum recession or inflammation. However, you are highly recommended to remove the wisdom tooth at the back (left back) which has only emerged for half.
his comment:FLOSS daily, put down the floss as deep as possible to the gum

The fourth dentist's comment (General dentist, almost 40 years experience)
You don't need deep cleaning. Your gum and teeth is fine. No problem. And you don't need AT ALL to remove the wisdom tooth at the back (left back). However, the one at the back of the right (right back) is decayed and required filling. This doctor has a very impressive new comment - DON'T FLOSS if you can't floss properly, OK, I guess you don't know how to floss, so please don't floss! Improper flossing will lead to periodontitis. You don't really need to floss to avoid periodontitis.... (Oh my god, who I can trust??)








I am so frustrated, after visiting FOUR dentists in 2 months they all give me different comments, the only thing I can agree from the four dentists and a lot of consultation fee and time. They all give diffferent stories and NEW brainstorming for me every time (e.g. Don't floss , im
proper flossing will lead to periodontitis....)

Now,
I don't know who I can trust.
I don't know if I need the very expensive deep cleaning treatment
I don't know if I still need to floss. (Books say we should floss, the old dentist said it's not good.. hahahahaa...)
I don't know why they are giving very different comments about my teeth. Isn't dentistry something logically standardized and different dentists should logically do the same thing?????

Now, The only thing I know is
Visiting more doctors might not give more useful comments
I don't want teeth loss in the future so I am struggling to avoid this now....if not, I won't have visited a lot of dentists. But I don't know what I can do now....








 
Re: visited FOUR dentists in 2 months with ALL different comments for my teeth

i saw your reply on my thread. I know how you feel. I have been to a few dentists over the last few months too and I don't know if I have gingivitis or periodontitis. it upsets me because my family don't have it. I'm not sure if anyone in another generation had it though. the fear is taking over my life. I cry the minute I wake up and most of the day. I wish I could turn the clock back and change things. I don't feel happy and confident anymore and I want to be. I haven't left the house much recently but I try sometimes. I have felt suicidal because its awful living in fear and not knowing what is going to happen. I worry in case I'm still not brushing and flossing the right way too and) panic when I see blood.do you get through each day OK?. do you work ?. how do you take your mind off it?. do you find it difficult to brush your teeth ?. I have a new boyfriend, a new place to live, a new niece and I should be happy. I am 31 next month. it isn't fair to be going through this at a young age.
 
Re: visited FOUR dentists in 2 months with ALL different comments for my teeth

I would tend to agree that not flossing correctly is not great. However, I would believe the dentist could have shown you the correct way to floss.

You have a general dentist and a periodontist who recommends a deep cleaning versus a general dentist recommending a simple cleaning versus a general dentist recommending nothing.

Did all dentists measure the depth of your gum pockets? A deep cleaning is to clean those deaper pockets.
 
Last edited:
Re: visited FOUR dentists in 2 months with ALL different comments for my teeth

i saw your reply on my thread. I know how you feel. I have been to a few dentists over the last few months too and I don't know if I have gingivitis or periodontitis. it upsets me because my family don't have it. I'm not sure if anyone in another generation had it though. the fear is taking over my life. I cry the minute I wake up and most of the day. I wish I could turn the clock back and change things. I don't feel happy and confident anymore and I want to be. I haven't left the house much recently but I try sometimes. I have felt suicidal because its awful living in fear and not knowing what is going to happen. I worry in case I'm still not brushing and flossing the right way too and) panic when I see blood.do you get through each day OK?. do you work ?. how do you take your mind off it?. do you find it difficult to brush your teeth ?. I have a new boyfriend, a new place to live, a new niece and I should be happy. I am 31 next month. it isn't fair to be going through this at a young age.

I totally went through everything you had mentioned. I felt like suicide too because of the bad teeth. I am going to be 31 too in the coming July. Time flies. However, I am not a doctor and all I can advise you from my heart is that you should consult a local dentist or periodontist with good reputation, and hope he or she would solve all your confusion in mind. Another very concrete advice I can give you is that you should NEVER, NEVER put 100% trust on the information from the internet. Continuous internet search for possibilities will make you even more anxious most likely without any reasons. Before I consult a very professional local periodontist, I kept searching on the web and I thought I was having advanced periodontitis and would at least lose a few tooth. I was very unhappy and worried and felt like suicide, so I totally understand you. However, after taking x-ray and measure of the pocket depth at the landmark of the city with the highest consultation cost, the periodontist laughed and said I had no loose tooth at all. He said I had periodontitis but it's a kind of beginning, and hardly even moderate. I then visited a few general dentist later. Although they have different comments about my teeth, they all agree that my teeth is now safe.

I hope you can make a visit to a specialized periodontist in case you are worried about gum disease. My experience is that some general dentists will overlook periodontitis or your oral health and do not recommend appropriate treatment for you.
 
Re: visited FOUR dentists in 2 months with ALL different comments for my teeth

I would tend to agree that not flossing correctly is not great. However, I would believe the dentist could have shown you the correct way to floss.

You have a general dentist and a periodontist who recommends a deep cleaning versus a general dentist recommending a simple cleaning versus a general dentist recommending nothing.

Did all dentists measure the depth of your gum pockets? A deep cleaning is to clean those deaper pockets.

Except the periodontist, none of the other general dentists measure the pocket depths of each tooth for me.

The first dentist was lazy bastard, he only did the simple scaling for me and didn't say anything actively. I asked one question and he made one short answer.

The periodontist recommended a deep cleaning treatment for my whole mouth and the whole treatment costs approx. US 5300 which includes everything, medicine, x-ray a few follow-up checks. However, I think it's a bit over-priced. The high cost of treatment and his warns about obvious gum recession after treatment make me still hesitating.....
 
Back
Top