[dropcap]A[/dropcap]ngela, a bright, pretty, 30 year old came to me for a TMJ exam last week and when I asked her who her general dentist was, she told me she didn’t have one.
“I just moved to San Diego from the east coast and I am looking for a new dentist. I went to Acme Dental Clinic (not the real clinic name) for a dental exam but I’m not going back there. I think they’re a scam.”
“Really? What happened?”
“They told me I needed 4 visits of deep cleaning for my periodontal disease and that I should also get my teeth whitened. They were selling those things pretty hard. I just got a bad feeling about them.”
I did six-point perio probing. This young lady had no visible calculus and I found one place—mesial of #3—that had a probe score of 4 mm. All the other scores were 2 or 3 mm. Healthy, normal gum tissue and no bleeding points whatsoever. Four quadrants of root planning? Totally unnecessary.
I put down my perio probe and Angela looked up at me. “Well?”
“Well, I’m just trying to find a polite word for BS. Sorry, I can’t think of one.”
