Asked for Dental NHS Scale and Polish.Told "Go to Hygienist at £25 extra"

boozercruiser

It is not my intention to upset anyone but there are people who visit here who may be interested in this article which was in Fridays 22nd April 2011 Daily Mail....whether you agree with what it says or not..........

Are you seeing the dentist too often? Pointless X-rays and needless check-ups could be adding up to a rip-off.



By John Naish
Last updated at 9:22 AM on 22nd April 2011

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Last year, with great reluctance, I was forced to register with a new dentist after a filling fell out and it became difficult to chew.
My previous dentist had been pressuring me into having costly treatments that served no purpose other than lining his own pockets, so I vowed to stop having check-ups altogether. Consequently, it had been more than ten years since I last opened wide and heard the dreaded sound of the drill.
My new dentist, a lady practitioner who came glowingly recommended, just smiled when I told her it had been a decade since my teeth were last examined. ‘Not a dentist by any chance, are you?’ She laughed.

Open wide: Frequent visits to the dentist could cost you more than unnecessary bills

Dentists, she told me, are notorious for avoiding check-ups. But then, they know a lot more about the business than we do.
Last week, the Government warned the public to ignore dentists who tell us to come for check-ups every six months. In fact, according to experts at the health watchdog, The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), most adults need to have a check-up only every two years.
The experts at Nice first issued this advice seven years ago. But since then the dental industry has done much to obliterate this fact. It undoubtedly threatens to dent their incomes.
Currently more than 70 per cent of NHS patients are called back to their dentists within nine months of their last treatment, figures from the Department of Health show. And Nice says, ‘There is good evidence that some patients are being recalled more frequently than is necessary.’
‘There is good evidence that some patients are being recalled more frequently than is necessary.’


Still, it is worrying to think that you might be missing out on a vital tooth-check. So perhaps it is better to just troop along in answer to the dentist’s frequent summons? But there are strong reasons why the Nice guidelines may make better sense — both for the sake of your health and for your finances.
The first reason is to prevent overtreatment. Concerns have been raised that some dentists are exploiting the system and inflating their pay by encouraging healthy patients with strong teeth to come for needless examinations. Figures show their average salaries have soared in recent years and one in ten now earns more than the Prime Minister, taking home at least £150,000 a year.
Indeed, information gathered by the Conservatives indicates how dentists ‘play the system’ through excessive appointment-setting or needlessly splitting courses of treatment into separate sessions.
The analysis, based on figures for 2008-09, suggests that 6.8million appointments a year are conducted this way — at a cost to NHS patients of £117million in ‘unnecessary charges’. This represents a fifth of the £572million charged each year for treating NHS patients, the Tory analysis said.
Worse still, dentists can be so unscrupulous as to give you serious treatment, such as fillings, crowns and bridges, that you don’t actually need. No one knows the full extent of this practice, because it is criminal. But it is hardly unknown.
Earlier this year, for example, Constantine Saridakis, a Lincolnshire dentist, was struck off after conning patients into paying thousands of pounds for unnecessary drilling.
The South African-born dentist was found guilty of ten incidents of dishonesty by a professional conduct committee at the General Dental Council. Saridakis had apparently insisted patients with perfectly healthy teeth were suffering from decay that required essential and costly treatment despite second opinions to the contrary.

When one professional colleague challenged him, he simply said, ‘Sometimes I’m in a money-making mood.’ Only the bravery of whistle-blowing dental nurses at his practice finally brought him to book.
Countless other patients have been affected, including the former BBC presenter Anna Grayson, 57. Last year she visited her local dentist for a check-up and was told she needed a filling. Grayson had the tooth filled but when it became painful she returned only to be told she required extra treatment costing hundreds of pounds.



Costly: Former BBC presenter Anna Grayson had a filling in a perfectly healthy tooth


Her suspicion aroused, she refused and instead went to Trading Standards officials, who were able to view an earlier X-ray of her mouth.

It showed that the troublesome tooth had previously been totally healthy and the filling she paid for served no purpose. Her dentist, Karen Hanbury, of the Den Dental practice in Teignmouth, Devon, was given an official warning by the General Dental Council.
I have experienced something similar, having fallen into the clutches of a rogue dentist ten years ago. He serially drilled and filled five of my teeth, then told me that I must have thousands of pounds worth of root-canal surgery, crowns and bridgework.

When I refused, he stormed out of the surgery room and left me there in the chair. My new dentist says there is nothing in my mouth to warrant any such work.
But there are other ways that hapless patients can increase their risk of falling victim to greedy dentists. According to one expert organisation, unscrupulous practitioners are boosting their profits by using cheap, potentially dangerous, fake-gold crowns and bridges on the unsuspecting public.
Dental laboratories are reported to be making thousands of gold-coloured dental implants each year for NHS and private dentists, using imported alloys that look like gold, but are not.

These cost a fraction of the price of real gold. Although some patients may agree to the cheaper metal to save money, NHS dentists are not allowed to use the copper-aluminium-based alloys, as they may corrode under attack from saliva and bacteria. They can then release potentially toxic metal particles into the mouth.
But there is no way of knowing how widely the use of fake-gold fillings has spread, because the NHS does not collect information on it. Government experts say it is very hard to check what implants are being used.
It is then a matter of Russian roulette as to what you get in your mouth, which is totally unacceptable in this day and age.’


Richard Daniels, the chief executive of the Dental Laboratories Association, believes that thousands of patients may be affected.

He has warned: ‘Most people will need a crown or a bridge at some point, so it is not a matter of if you’ll be affected, but when. It is then a matter of Russian roulette as to what you get in your mouth, which is totally unacceptable in this day and age.’
But even with the most morally scrupulous dentist, unnecessarily frequent check-ups may expose you to another danger. This is due to X-rays, which have long been a feature of routine dental checks.
The risk level is controversial, but British researchers warned last year that the more dental X-rays you have, the higher your risk grows of developing thyroid cancer. Their study of just over 300 thyroid cancer patients, in the medical journal Acta Oncologica, found that repeated X-rays significantly increased the risk of the disease, prompting the researchers to question the widely held belief that dental radiography is absolutely safe.
Certainly, the disease has become significantly more common in recent years. The researchers, led by Dr Anjum Memon, a consultant in public health medicine at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, report that the rates of thyroid cancer in the UK have doubled from 1.4 in every 100,000 people in 1975 to 2.9 per 100,000 in 2006.
A number of earlier studies have reported a link between dental X-rays and cancers of the thyroid, salivary glands and brain. It is known that dentists and their assistants are at higher risk of tumours. Dr Memon has called for a rethink on the use of X-rays as part of routine check-ups and for greater caution when using them on children.

Terrifying: One in five women, and one in ten men admit to being gripped by terror at the thought of the dentist¿s chair

A more positive reason for not traipsing to the surgery every six months is that we don’t have to worry about our wisdom teeth. Fashions have changed, so dentists should no longer be urging you to have them whipped out in case they cause trouble some day in the future.
The official guidance from Nice now is that unless your wisdom teeth are causing pain or pushing other teeth out of the way, they should be left exactly where they are. Around one in 100 people suffer serious nerve damage from wisdom-teeth removal, according to American Journal of Public Health. They can be left with no feeling in their lips, tongue and cheek.
Someone should have told that to the Arsenal striker Robin Van Persie, though. He was so convinced that his wisdom teeth were somehow responsible for a string of injuries that he had them pulled out in 2009. The expert advice now is that such fears are merely the stuff of tooth-fairy tales.
All of this should come as reassuring news to the many thousands of people who suffer extreme anxiety before they even enter a surgery. The Adult Dental Health (ADH) survey earlier this year found that one in five women, and one in ten men admit to being gripped by terror at the thought of the dentist’s chair.
It may also bring comfort to the growing numbers who guiltily fear that they can no longer afford to answer the dentist’s six-monthly summons. One in five of us have put off check-ups because of fear that the bills will be too high, according to the ADH survey.
Of course, common sense must prevail here. If you have problems such as inflamed gums, toothache, broken fillings and crowns or mouth sores that refuse to go away, then a prompt dental visit is a must. For the rest of us, aim to sit in the chair only once every two years. Quite simply, there is no good reason to put yourself through it any more often than that.



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1379417/Are-seeing-dentist-Pointless-X-rays-needless-check-ups-adding-rip-off.html#ixzz1KITz7hfW

jugglebug

I haven't time to poke all the holes in this that I want to as it's a nice day and my little boy has plans that don't involve his dad sitting at a PC .
However it is a good example of selective reporting and contradictory guidance from the powers that be.
You see I have guidance from up above that says an annual oral cancer screen is vital for all patients as success rates for treatment are closely linked to early diagnosis.
Then I have another that says that for many Youngsters 3 monthly professional Fluoride applications are indicated. It is hard to apply that stuff without looking in the mouth
Then we have the Daily Mail taking the bit in NICE guidance that says some folk only need dental check ups every 2 years.
All three papers were distributed by the Dept of Health :rotfl:

What are all us poor folk to do? Dentist and non Dentist alike when the info given out is so random.

I would suggest taking advice from some journalist from a random newspaper isn't the 1st option.

jugglebug

Aaargh can't stop myself adding one more thing.
The NICE guidance for Wisdom teeth is about the oldest document they ever produced, it isn't new in any meaning of the word and if you search this very forum you will find loads of posts about wisdom teeth where the advice has been for quite some time to leave well alone.
The laugh of that paragraph is that the Americans are quoted re the problems of removal but the norm in the USA is to whip em out a damn sight sooner than we do here. Selective reporting again.

boozercruiser

jugglebug wrote: »

Aaargh can't stop myself adding one more thing.
The NICE guidance for Wisdom teeth is about the oldest document they ever produced, it isn't new in any meaning of the word and if you search this very forum you will find loads of posts about wisdom teeth where the advice has been for quite some time to leave well alone.
The laugh of that paragraph is that the Americans are quoted re the problems of removal but the norm in the USA is to whip em out a damn sight sooner than we do here. Selective reporting again.

Thanks for input Jugglebug.....i'me adding nothing except to say you go and have a lovely day with your little boy who obviously has the nicest teeth in the land!

Will he be having Easter Eggs?:D

I havent got any of my children or even grandchildren to enjoy times with so I envy you that.


Best Regards

Boozercruiser

brook2jack

And this is an article from the mail saying nhs dentistry is in a mess because so many millions of people haven't seen a dentist in two years http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-508496/Seven-million-patients-dentist-NHS-years.html

Every country in the world recommends at least 6 month check ups and in America quite often more. There is no scientific research or justification for recommending two year check ups other than to make sure that more people can be seen less often.

In two years a little bit of decay that with proper advice might not have needed filling may turn into an extraction. A little build up of plaque that with advice a patient can clean away may lead to irreversible gum damage and an oral cancer becomes untreatable and fatal.

The dental health if the elderly and poor is decreasing because these are the people who do not keep regular check ups. Ridiculous articles like this help them to put off attending as regularly as they should with disastrous consequences.

Final ps is when the last set of statistics were published nhs dentists underprescribed x rays, as they are often the only way early decay etc is spotted. British dentists take far less x rays than in America.

As jugglebug said it would take a book to rubbish all the factual inaccuracies in this article but then the daily mail , when it comes to dentistry, is rarely interested in the truth.

brook2jack

Final thought, any of us who have ever worked in a NHS emergency treatment clinic will tell you 95% of those that are seen are those who do not keep 6 month check ups. Often not because they haven't got a dentist but because they haven't seen the need to go more than once every couple of years because they're" not having any problems". That is until a Friday night when an abcess blows up.

I am part of a rota for a large group of private practices. Because all our patients have insurance a call out doesnt cost much. Between 20 dentists plus we rarely get a call out at the weekend because all our patients see us and the hygienists every six months. The local nhs clinics are inundated with people ( there is no shortage of nhs dentists) with problems and the vast majority have not seen a dentist in the last six months.

How would you like to discover you have a problem... At an early stage when you can do something to stop it or when you are in pain and the only option is to fill or take the tooth out?

boozercruiser

It seems like you really get around a lot brook2jack and who am I to argue with your experience?

And no one can argue with "How would you like to discover you have a problem... At an early stage when you can do something to stop it or when you are in pain and the only option is to fill or take the tooth out"?

either.

Now then....when is that next dental check up? Just as soon as I know if I can stay on Denticares books I suppose!

brook2jack

And as you know there is no such thing as staying on denticares books. Registration was abolished in 2006 and you have no "right " to see a particular nhs dentist or go to a particular practice. If they have no capacity or have run out of udas then there is no compunction to see you. This can be a problem around March time when practices often have to ration treatment to stay within their contract. It can also be a problem if you have toothache because the LHB not the dentist is responsible for sorting out toothache problems if the dentist has no spare space to fit you in.

This measure again was brought in so more people would be seen less often.

boozercruiser

brook2jack wrote: »

And as you know there is no such thing as staying on denticares books. Registration was abolished in 2006 and you have no "right " to see a particular nhs dentist or go to a particular practice. If they have no capacity or have run out of udas then there is no compunction to see you. This can be a problem around March time when practices often have to ration treatment to stay within their contract. It can also be a problem if you have toothache because the LHB not the dentist is responsible for sorting out toothache problems if the dentist has no spare space to fit you in.

This measure again was brought in so more people would be seen less often.

I was obviously being a bit tongue in cheek about Denticare. I am under no illusions though that they would like to see the back of me.
(a bit like some here I suppose) Like any company, they don't want complainers....they just want people who will come in.....take the treatment....take the extra uncalled for charges and then sod off for six months so they can start the whole routine all over again.

Consumer programs like Watchdog etc. and paper/TV news articles which show how too many people who turn to the health service are being dumped on would not exist if every company inside or outside the health industry played fair by the consumer. Or indeed this very Forum!

Your last comments there also show that NHS dental care is one area which has not improved in recent years.

I had to get into my sixtees before I felt the need to raise any issue regarding my dental care, and that speakes for itself as far as I am concerned.

coldstreamalways

Just got back from the emergency clinic that I run a few times a month, I was there on Fri (v quiet) and today, on again next Fri and Mon. Half of the customers were people I will probably see again within a few months as almost all of their teeth need filling or removing. Sad really as I know that there are at least five practices within a mile of my emergency clinic that are taking on NHS patients but will they register? More chance of getting mugged by a snowman to be honest.

The small hole that is present now will be enormous and painful in two years. The gum disease that is present now in a heavy smoker will be severe periodontal disease in two years. I can't bear to think about the early squamous cell carcinoma under he tongue that isn't painful but will kill the patient horribly within five years. If the Daily Mail says two years then who am I, a highly qualified dental surgeon, to say any different?

Still, they aren't my teeth, my gums or my soft tissues, all of my nearest and dearest are seen every six months. That's what matters.