Quest for a celebrity smile is damaging healthy teeth
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- Published: Sunday, 04 January 2015 15:03
- Written by News Editor
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The Sunday Times has reported that experts from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh have said that patients are paying thousands of pounds for ‘quick-fix cosmetic dentistry’ that does not last. The college says vulnerable patients are being poorly informed about long-term damage and complications resulting from some of the most popular procedures.
This is a link to the introduction of the article, but you need to subscribe or buy the paper for the full text:
http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/article1503308.ece
The Sunday Times article says that dentists are cashing in on the demand for gleaming smiles, popularised by reality TV shows, even though the procedures can do ‘irreversible harm to healthy teeth’.
Martin Kelleher, consultant in restorative dentistry at King’s College Dental Institute and a fellow of the royal college’s dental faculty, said the trend amounted to “destructodontics” of healthy teeth. He called the trend “porcelain pornography”.
The college says vulnerable patients are being poorly informed about long-term damage and complications resulting from some of the most popular procedures. Risky treatments include “smile makeovers” using porcelain or ceramic veneers on healthy teeth, and short-term orthodontics, which can cost from £5,000 to £20,000. Many patients are not told that up to half of porcelain veneers will not last 10 years, meaning further treatments will be required.
Martin Kelleher continued: “The fashion for what I term ‘porcelain pornography’ is a real and present danger for society and the dental profession at large,” he said. “This type of dentistry appears to be promoted by individuals and in certain dental publications that have strong commercial interests in their proliferation. Lured by promises of rapid profits, some younger dental colleagues are being encouraged down a path leading to the unnecessary destruction of sound teeth.”
The article continued by sayng that short-term orthodontics have a heightened risk of relapse and can require lifelong professional supervision if the patient does not use a permanent retainer to hold teeth in their new position. Without these measures the teeth tip back to their original position. “Even if another course of short-term orthodontics is undertaken to resolve the problem, the back-and-forth tipping pressures can make the teeth’s roots shallow and make them likelier to fall out later in life.”
Robert Chate, consultant orthodontist and vice-dean of the royal college’s dental faculty, believes that some dentists may be putting financial gain ahead of their patients’ wellbeing. “The rise in complaints clearly shows that the benefits of these quick-fix treatments are undoubtedly being oversold, with little or no mention about their risks and limitations,” he said.
He added: “There is a failure on the part of some dentists to manage the expectations of their patients, placing an over-reliance on digital systems, in which the desired outcome is simulated on a computer screen before treatment, giving patients a rose-tinted view of what essentially will be a limited result. With up to a quarter of orthodontic retainers failing after six years of use, the relapse potential for crowded teeth that have been managed using short-term aligners is very real. Associated with this comes the risk of placing a patient’s long-term dental health in jeopardy — all for the sake of the enticing lure of a quick fix.”
Finally the paper reported that the deans of the four UK dental faculties recently wrote to Lord Howe, the health minister with responsibility for quality, offering to contribute to any new reviews on developing standards and regulations for “cosmetic” dentistry.
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