Russians Wonder How Affordable the Dental Treatment for Average Americans Is

Upon learning that I am an American dentist, people immediately ask me: “Why do all Americans have good teeth?”.

Well, let us finally dispel the myth.

I assure you that Americans have all kind of teeth. And there are many more people without the Hollywood smile than those who have the shining pearly teeth.

What do we have in America in terms of dentistry?

1) In America, the access to high-tech dental offices is easy for those who have sufficient funds. Regular check-ups at least twice a year, preventive approach to oral health, early care and modern aesthetic technologies give us the segment of people with sparkling pearly teeth.

2) Dentistry in America is very expensive.

The average monthly salary is $ 44K per year while the average cost of restoring the tooth with deep caries (sealing the root canal, pin, crown) is about $ 2K. It means that the treatment of one tooth might cost like half month salary.

Not everyone can afford it. Even if you have insurance, in most cases, it covers not more than $ 1,000-1,500 per year, and even that is not for all procedures and not for 100% value.

This situation gives rise to that segment of population, for whom dental medicine is “too tough to bite”.

3) Americans still have low average level of public knowledge about the prevention of oral diseases despite all efforts of professional dental associations and the state.

And it’s not only because of expensive treatments.

For example, for children from poor families there are programs that cover all dental services. However, the low cultural and social background of these families often poses an obstacle to normal treatment and prevention of diseases. They are simply not taken to the dentist until they have toothache!

Moreover, in American schools children are fed with candies on every opportunity given as reward. Only in recent years they have banned the sales of carbonated cola-like drinks in American schools, which literally dissolve the teeth.

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As a result, the “situation in mouth” is often so bad that there is nothing else left to do but remove all teeth and insert the dentures.

For many, this solution seems to be the best way out. No teeth – no problem.

I often hear the phrases like: “Doctor, I’m tired of my teeth, I want dentures”, “My parents lost their teeth at the age of 20, and I am already over 30, it’s time to remove”, “My teeth are so soft, no matter how much I brush them – anyway there will be holes, let’s just extract them all”…

In the situation when repairing the tooth costs more than denture, many choose the cheaper way. Americans don’t have the complex of absence of teeth, they don’t associate it with the onset of old age.

The dental illnesses of which millions of Americans suffer each year are caries and gum disease. Caries ruins the tooth leaving just small roots, chewing with which becomes impossible.

This patient had 25 teeth removed in 15 minutes, because all I had to do was to peel off the remaining stumps.

Source: http://valera-kolpakov.livejournal.com/309228.html

And these extracted teeth were in almost perfect condition, but because of the loss of jawbone tissue and gum disease, they were shaking like young trees from the wind. Black lines were marked by me to show the surface which in the past was immersed into jawbone, and only the area below the black line is the support that remained.

On average, each week I “free” 6-8 American mouths from teeth because of the reasons indicated above.

Dental prosthetics occupies the huge segment in American dentistry, there are entire networks of clinics, which inexpensively remove all teeth and insert the dentures. And the artificial teeth, if done well, look better than real teeth – smooth and white. Others point fingers at these people, too, wondering where they’ve got such a “Hollywood smile”.