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Do dentists actually know what they’re doing?
Hraness wrote this summary from a saved copy of the source. Quotations are taken word for word from the source.
gist
Parker Tatum recounts sixteen years of jaw pain through a string of dentists, each confidently diagnosing a different problem and selling a different fix, from tooth reshaping and splints to twelve cavities and a $150,000 jaw surgery. The comic, first-person essay leaves him unsure whom to believe, and it ends with yet another specialist referring him onward.
ideas
- Confidence without consensus. Each practitioner contradicts the last on splints, night guards, cavities, and gum recession, often with the same certainty.
- Incentives shape diagnoses. Another dentist calls one dentist's shadowy x-ray cavities trolling for dollars, and a surgeon's $100,000 to $150,000 plan meets a second opinion of six months of Invisalign.
- Office as signal. He learns to distrust sleek offices and perfect reviews, then finds the polished office his sister recommends does reasonable work.
- The patient carries the cost. Treatments he was talked into, like tooth reshaping at 17, become the next dentist's problem to fix.
quotes
“Well, he’s a surgeon. Maybe every mouth looks like a nail he should hammer.”
“I’ve learned my lesson about nice offices.”
“Who do I believe?”