My DMO (not PPO) plan only covers some parts of some procedures.
My dentist says my share of the deep cleaning is $973. That seems hideously expensive when my teeth feel fine and I have absolutely zero issues.
How necessary are deep cleanings?
I want to trust the people in the medical profession, but this seems like a way to snark a bunch of my money. The insurance company must not be too convinced, they don’t cover a whole lot of the cost of the procedure.
Well, you can brush and floss religiously and still not get everywhere you need to clean. Think of it as the difference between vacuumming and renting a steam cleaner.
I would say you should have one every six months.
At a thousand bucks a throw? Dang, I can see why people in the US complain about healthcare costs. If a ‘deep clean’ is a going-over by the hygenist with pick+turbobrush, that normally costs me about £70 a throw (mebbe $110). I find it hard to believe you need anything more than that on a regular basis unless you have some pre-existing condition. Most people don’t bother with a hygenist at all and have zero issues - but I have thin enamel and am lazy about flossing :o
I have Delta Dental, and I’ve never paid a dime at the dentist. They authorize up to three cleanings a year, but I only get two. They charge me $40 for my share of X-rays, which I also get twice a year, but my dentist waves that charge.
The twice a year cleaning isn’t a $973 expense though. My dentist charges $120 for the exam, cleaning, & 2 bitewing x-rays, and my insurance covers all of it.
A deep cleaning is not the same thing a routine dental office cleaning (the kind one gets if one goes to the dentist every six months), as I found out a couple of months ago. It is more intensive (they offer anesthetics for it), takes much longer and is more expensive (though my insurance did cover the bulk of it). I needed one precisely because I had not had a routine cleaning in about 3 years. I had no symptoms, but was on my way to serious gum disease.
It’s worth it if your teeth are OK. You really need to find a dentist that treats your whole mouth as a unit.
If you’re mouth is full of bridges and caps and you’re probably gonna wind up in dentures in five or ten years, a deep cleaning isn’t gonna help much.
You need to decide things as a whole.
Never had a dental cleaning at all in my entire life (late 30s). Never floss, either. Just fastidious brushing.
I do have some dental issues now, but nowhere near as bad an many might expect.
A Deep Cleaning is different than the twice-a-year cleanings.
Dentists claim that Deep Cleanings are needed to fight something called Periodontal Disease.
This is apparently caused by bacteria gathering well below your gums, where brushing, flossing, and mouth washes can’t get to it.
They say they need to numb my mouth and do it in two sessions (left half of mouth one time, then right half another time). Apparently they dig around underneath the gums and pull out bacteria that’s been hanging out for years.
Then they polish the teeth under the gums so there are no “pits” for bacteria to start up again.
They say one should get this every 2-5 years, depending on how deep the “pockets” get.
They measure gum pockets by shoving a pick into the gum area and measuring the mm of depth.
All this stuff is so important … yet 9 insurance plans out of 10 barely cover it. And you have to have been in the work force a good while before you get good enough insurance to even broach having this stuff done (I know there’ll be tons of contrary anecdotes from the folks who went into white-collar work right out of college).
Bah. Material for another thread entirely.
Is there any way to get a “second opinion” on the cost? My husband’s dentist wanted to charge a similarly outrageous amount for a deep cleaning. We checked around and found another dentist (to whom we switched because we like him better) who did it for about half the cost, maybe less.
Heh. It’s so important that I’d never even heard of it, and neither my dentist or hygenist have ever felt the need to bring it up. :dubious:
That’s definitely a personal thing. Not flossing equals immediate cavities for me, while I have friends who are like you, and suffer little. Then there are the unlucky ones (other friends) whose teeth are in rough shape despite careful cleaning.
As someone who does not floss as often as I should I do require a deep cleaning every 2 or 3 years or so in the past. However it seems that this requirement has gone away ever since I’ve started using an electric toothbrush and spending extra time brushing with it. To the OP, you may want to tell your dentist that you will first try to be more diligent in flossing and using an electric toothbrush, then decide if you’d want to do the deep cleaning. After, say 3 months, of better dental hygiene you may even want to consider taking your teeth to another dentist for his/her opinion. Your teeth aren’t going to all fall out in 3 months!
I recently got a deep cleaning, and it was NOT $1000. More like $600, which is still expensive, but your dentist is charging a lot, IMO.
It wasn’t fun (I went without novacaine b/c I hate the stuff, and it wasn’t THAT painful), but my teeth do seem much cleaner now, and the did get a lot of tartar & stuff out from under the gumline, so I think it was worth it in the end.
Whole thing took about 3 hours. Apparently, the usually do it in quarters, but I hate the dentist and was more comfortable mentally doing the whole thing at once and getting it over with, rather than dreading 3-4 trips to the dentist. Cost was the same either way.
I also have never heard of this.
I am pretty suspicious of dentists. Flouridated water and fairly ubiquitous brushing have cut way down on their stock in trade of pulling and filling teeth. I’ve seen circulars for seminars on “optimizing dental office profitability” by upselling a variety of dubious services.
I get way more x-rays than I think I need (I turn them down sometimes), and the elaborate “periodontal mapping” seems like just another excuse to charge me an extra $70. My guy seems to have a target that he doesn’t want you getting out for less than $250 a visit.
I quit one dentist when he pulled out some laser gadget to “evaluate the porosity of your teeth.” More like the porosity of my wallet.
In short, caveat emptor.
WHAT???
No way - I’ve had periodontal issues and no, no, no they are not necessary or even recommended every six months.
For the OP - you can have gum disease even if you feel no pain. If you aren’t certain you need this get a second dentist’s opinion. Yes, it may cost you money but it will be cheaper than a deep clean you don’t need.
That said - I had one of these, improved my dental hygiene, and my periodontal issues went away. I go every six months for regular cleanings and exam/x-ray and am no longer having problems. So, if you truly need one it can be a worthwhile thing to do, but like I said, you may want a second opinion because some dentists do use these to generate income rather than do what’s best for the patient.
Anesthesia?? A grand??
Shoot, when I was young, at one point I didn’t see a dentist until my gums DID start to bleed. The dentist did some kind of thorough cleaning (he might’ve given me nitrous) and it solved the problem. Since then I get 6-month regular cleanings as part of the checkup, and it sure isn’t anywhere near a grand. My memory says they aren’t different from that first cleaning, and I don’t need novocaine or anything for the slight pain involved. My gums are in good shape, and none of my dentists has recommended anything more drastic. I think my current dentist is in his early 40s, so it’s not like he’s old school and doesn’t believe in newfangled things.
Once I did visit a dental chain, not that I was dissatisfied with my dentist, but I just wanted to see if it might be better. I’ve forgotten the name of the chain, but it was the one that had the tv commercial modeled after the Wizard of Oz, where “Dorothy” said “But dentists are so expensive!” In any case they recommended a ton of work that didn’t seem necessary and I didn’t go back.
This sure does not sound necessary. Get a second opinion. Talk to people you know or contact your local dental society for some dentist recommendations.
Oh, I’d say the depth of your pockets has a lot to do with this procedure. Not the kind of pockets they’re talking about, though.