Comment by Waterluvian
12 days ago
If anyone's a dentist or is close to one, I'd love to know something I haven't found a satisfactory answer for online: if the vast majority of cavities were "magically" cured over the next few years, what impact would that have on the finances of your practice?
I'm not suggesting there's a conscious conspiracy or anything malicious. But I observe that incentives are weirdly aligned. I wonder what this kind of thing would do to a very large industry if all of a sudden some percentage of business disappeared. Is it a large percentage? Would they pivot to more preventative medicine? Would patients adopt a longer duration between checkups?
I’m a dentist. If cavities vanished tomorrow, it would definitely change things, but not as much as you might guess. Cavities and crowns make up a decent slice of what most general practices do, but there’s still gum disease, cracked teeth, teeth wear, implants, bite issues, cosmetic work, and so on. A lot of what keeps people coming in isn’t just sugar, although from the outside I understand why it might look like sugar is the whole game.
Financially, there’d be a short-term hit for offices that rely heavily on fillings, but the field would adjust. Most of us would focus more on prevention, maintenance, and elective care. Dentistry has already been slowly shifting that direction for years with better materials, scanners, and aligners.
So if everyone suddenly stopped getting cavities, I’d still have plenty to do. It would just look a little different.
But if you don't have cavities, doesn't that mean that there's going to be now reduced need for not just fillings, but down the road also crowns, root canals, implants, etc (at least caused by tooth deterioration that starts as cavities)?
I think there would just be fewer dentists. It's like asking what would happen to the finances of weight loss clinics if magically Americans weren't as obese.
I will say my dentists always try to convince me to floss more often, regardless of any economic benefit they might have for me to disregard my teeth.
I also would imagine cleanings aren't where the big money is in the profession, but like you would be interested to hear from actual dentists.
Teeth are still susceptible to mechanical wear, and as life expectancy is inching towards 90 (at least among wealthier people in wealthier countries), dentists will have a lot of work to do anyway.
The societal standard matters more than raw incidence of cavities etc. Three generations ago, it was considered absolutely normal to have dentures in your fifties. Nowadays, middle class people tend to die with (heavily fixed, but still their) teeth and some implants in their mouths.
Not a dentist, but my read of the situation is that dentists generally are not very excited about doing fillings and there's a push towards getting into more complex procedures like root canals, invisalign and implants. It's probably partly due to wanting to upskill and increase your repertoire and partly due to the margins. The margins with these procedures can be an order of magnitude more than that of fillings, especially anything that is supplied by a big brand.
I like how you ask explicitly for replies from dentists and then most of the answers you get are people saying they aren't dentists but still want to give their two cents anyway.
Not a dentist but I definitely couldn't see it going away. Also curious to hear a more knowledgeable opinion.
There will always be accidents and need of non-cavity repairs. As a kid I broke a healthy tooth eating Doritos. It didn't make sense to my dentist either. I've broken a less healthy (but repaired) tooth on a candy coated peanut, and one a Twizzler Nib.
I grind my teeth, so everything is being worn and torn at a higher rate. The mouth guard won't generate itself.
Hate to say it, but if I thought my teeth would stick around longer, I'd probably be more likely to seek cosmetic fixes. I'm apparently really hard on them or something.