Dental Specialists

Has this ever happened to you? You go to your general dentist. He looks at your problem and says, “I need to refer you to so-and-so dental specialist”. You look at them and think, “Why can’t you treat my problem?”

People have a hard time finding a dentist they feel comfortable with. There’s just something about letting someone look at and work on your mouth. More people fear dental work than any other kind of treatment. So now, your dentist that you’ve grown comfortable with, wants to send you to someone else?

Geeze.

This is a typical scenario: you have pain and swelling around a tooth. You’re sent to a dental specialist, an Endodontist, to see if you need a root canal. He checks and finds that your root’s fractured and recommends extraction by another dental specialist, an oral surgeon. After extraction, if your gum’s infected, it will need to be treated. So off you go to a periodontist. They fix the gum problem but also find a problem with your bite and suggest you see a prosthodontist. And you can fix that crooked tooth if you see an orthodontist.

Just as the medical community has diversified into a myriad of specialists, so has the dental community. There are a number of dental specialties:

Periodontists: Gum problems, some do implants
Endodontists: Root Canal
Prosthodontist: Crown, bridge, dentures, partials, implants
Oral Surgeon: Tooth removal and maxillofacial surgery
Pediadontist: Children’s dentists
Orthodontist: Braces

It’s simple really. If your dentist thinks someone else could help you better, they send you to that person. That’s good patient care. After all, wouldn’t you rather have them send you somewhere else if they’re not comfortable handling your problem?

So don’t feel abandoned and ‘discarded’. Don’t feel like a ‘problem patient’ for your dentist. You may have a ‘problem mouth’ or ‘problem tooth’ that is just beyond the scope of your general dentists’ expertise. This is no different than your medical doctor sending you to an orthopedic specialist for a broken bone.

There are others that can do it better, faster, or make it more comfortable for you. Welcome to the world of dental specialists.