Dentists every six months?!

EmmyLou30

Ours insist every 6 months and funnily enough always finds a tiny bit on the edge of the tooth that needs a bit of filling, ker-ching, £50 for her again. I'm sure I have an awful lot of drilled bits I never needed. And she'll never do her job properly as the NHS guidelines state, you always have to pay £40 to go see the hygeinist for a scale. Why do I still go there? All the rest are even worse in our area!!

Paully232000

EmmyLou30 wrote: »

Ours insist every 6 months and funnily enough always finds a tiny bit on the edge of the tooth that needs a bit of filling, ker-ching, £50 for her again. I'm sure I have an awful lot of drilled bits I never needed. And she'll never do her job properly as the NHS guidelines state, you always have to pay £40 to go see the hygeinist for a scale. Why do I still go there? All the rest are even worse in our area!!

Can you not say no to the scale.
I am sure there was another, quite big, thread on here about that, and I am sure that the general feeling was that hygienist fees were said to come under band 2 of the NHS fees. I could be wrong however.

MarkBargain

A scale and polish is included under NHS Band 1 (£18.50) if required.

http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/nhs-dental-band-charges.aspx

Torry_Quine

I have a six-monthly check up and it's been years since a problem was found at one. I always get a clean from the dentist which costs from memory less than £10. Last month my crown came off and it was cemented back on for less than £10 also so good value here.

Keep_pedalling

Both me and my wife have the same (private) dentist, she goes every 6 months and me once a year. This is based on or previous history. She is on an insurance based fees, and I am pay as you go.

"Going when you need too" is a really bad idea for two reasons, the first is that when you do go you will need more done than you would have with a regular check up and the second is that your dentist is looking at your whole mouth not just your teeth so is ideally placed to pick up early signs of mouth cancer which is something that you not not want to have a late diagnoses with.

brook2jack

Nice recommends that dental check ups are tailored to the individual.

Someone who has a lot of problems with gum disease or decay may need to go every three months. Someone with full dentures once a year ( oral cancer kills more people each year than cervical cancer and the rates of oral cancer are increasing at an enormous rate. It is also affecting younger people , I know of a sixteen year old who is undergoing treatment).

If you are needing treatment at more or less every appointment then six months sounds right as an interval. You want problems solving before they give you pain or infection.

There is no registration with dentists in England and Wales only Scotland and Ireland. However dentists try to prioritise regular patients as they only have a limited contract to provide nhs treatment each year.

Peter333

brook2jack wrote: »

Nice recommends that dental check ups are tailored to the individual.

Someone who has a lot of problems with gum disease or decay may need to go every three months. Someone with full dentures once a year ( oral cancer kills more people each year than cervical cancer and the rates of oral cancer are increasing at an enormous rate. It is also affecting younger people , I know of a sixteen year old who is undergoing treatment).

If you are needing treatment at more or less every appointment then six months sounds right as an interval. You want problems solving before they give you pain or infection.

I think what the OP is saying is not that something needs doing every six months, but that the dentist seems to find something to do every six months. There is a glaring difference.

fierystormcloud wrote: »

Why do we have to go to the dentist every 6 months?

This really grinds my gears.

I am tired of having to go that often, purely to stay registered. Moreover, I am tired of the dreaded bill every time, and worrying what they are going to find, and how much it's going to cost.

I am really annoyed at having to go every six months, because my teeth are fine. Yet the dentist almost always seems to find something to charge me for. I don't think I have gone more than 3 times out of the last 10, without something having to be done! When I go, as far as I know there is nothing wrong, but he always finds something. :huh:


Most older people I have spoken to (like over 45) only seem to have issues now that were caused by dentists drilling unnecessarily into their teeth in the 70s and 80s anyway! Many people I know middle aged and over, have had to have expensive crowns on teeth that were stupidly over-filled for no reason in the first place!

So why DO the dentists insist you go every six months?

Apart from bringing in lots of extra revenue, what other reason is there to have to go every six months?

And another poster said something similar too.

EmmyLou30 wrote: »

Ours insist every 6 months and funnily enough always finds a tiny bit on the edge of the tooth that needs a bit of filling, ker-ching, £50 for her again. I'm sure I have an awful lot of drilled bits I never needed. And she'll never do her job properly as the NHS guidelines state, you always have to pay £40 to go see the hygienist for a scale. Why do I still go there? All the rest are even worse in our area!!

I could say the same about ours. 2 out of 3 times we go, (he also insists on 6-monthly,) they always find something, and yet mine and my wife's teeth are fine, but there is always a little tiny bit of something that supposedly needs doing. And it's £50.50 each time!

I have a young adult daughter who never ever had anything done, all of her childhood and teens. (While she got the treatment free...) As soon as she hit 19, and was responsible for payment, the dentist suddenly started finding things to do. A tiny little filling at the edge of the tooth: that will be £50.50 please! And then the next visit, ANOTHER little filling that took 10 seconds... £50.50 please. A filling which I suspect not only did not need doing, but also, would not have been done if she was still under the 'free treatment' umbrella.

Sadly, we are at the mercy of dentists; they can strike us off at the drop of a hat, and tell us all sorts needs doing when it doesn't. Kinda like a mechanic lying about the amount of stuff needing doing to your car, so he can exploit you. Unfortunately this is more serious, because it's affecting our teeth for life!

And I have also heard some horror tales about people (now middle aged) having all kinds of work done when they were a child that probably did not need doing, and now 25-30 years on, their teeth are horribly weak and feeble.

Something needs doing, but I don't know what.

Keep_pedalling

I think the vast majority of dentists are honest and only carry out treatment when required, but as in all professions there are dodgy ones out there. If you find a good one stick with them, if not register with another.

Apart from the school dentist (the horror of it) I stayed well way from them until in my early twenty's one of my molars collapsed. It had obviously been rotting from the inside without the slightest bit of pain, so I was forced to find a dentist to sort it out. he said he had no choice but to remove it so out it came, along with several fillings in other teeth.

A few weeks later I got a letter saying this dentist had decided to retire. I think in reality he had no choice because judging by the amount of broken bits he had left in I think his eyesight was failing badly. After that I found a really good dentist and stuck with him after his practice when the private. He has also retired now and I'm with the guy who bought him out.

I go once a year and on most occasions require nothing more than a clean and polish which sets me back £75.

I regret that period of not having a dentist, which has cost me one missing molar and a crown on another that was originally filled by Mr Magoo back in the 70's

brook2jack

It is worth pointing out that a dentist gets paid the same amount for treatment whether a patient pays a charge or not. So for the poster who complained that their daughter only started having treatment once she was an adult, the dentist would have received the same money if they had done the treatment when your daughter was a child. The patient charge is deducted from the amount the nhs pays for treatment. So an adult pays £50.50 the nhs tops that up to roughly £63. A child has the same treatment the nhs pays the whole £63.

There is no financial advantage to waiting until a patient turns 19 at all.

Azmataz

My dentist told me to return for my next check in 2 years, unless I feel there's a problem before then. :eek: On the other hand, the same practice requires my OH to go every 6 months.