How can you stay away from the dentist, or “Keep coming so you can stay away” – the best dental advice.

If our patients step through the front door, we are hoping that they are seeking serious consideration and the best dental advice that we can give.  We hope our love for dentistry shows through our enthusiasm and continuous change.

First, a little anecdote from Dr. Wong’s earlier practice life as associate dentist in Saint John, New Brunswick: a visit with a patient went like this:
1) patient came because of a broken tooth. The problem was complicated because the broken tooth was also holding in a denture.

2) a look into his mouth revealed very few remaining teeth, and those that remained were heavily filled or decayed.  The broken tooth was non-restorable due to decay.

3) the patient proudly proclaimed that he had “gone to the dentist his whole life”.

How we managed his problem is not the point of this story – it is the irony that despite having gone to the dentist his whole life, it did not seem to have helped him keep his teeth. He was without most of them and was about to lose the rest. What went wrong?

Part of the problem was an old-school mentality at that office (thankfully long since closed) that did not include much patient education.

Another problem was a reactive approach that waited for problems to occur.  Instead of pushing the benefits of prevention, patients were content to repair problems and the office was not keen to change their mindset. This led to a vicious cycle of low expectations and low quality dental outcomes.

Finally, there was little commitment to continuing education and therefore little evidence of improvement in techniques or management of problems.

Dr. Wong ain’t got no time for that garbage no mo’.

We have made a decision to push the limits of our comfort levels, never expecting things to stay the same for long, and making a commitment to practice based on the most progressive, up-to-date evidence that we can get our hands on.

Our thinking is geared towards providing evidence-based predictive decisions in order to be able to intervene before things become problems. Our approach is to provide individualized treatment plans to our patients designed to reduce dental risk. And our ultimate goal is to deliver dentistry that lasts, fulfills our patients’ goals, and just as importantly, is affordable to the patient.

This means that our materials selection is very specific and our techniques are based on things that work.  When we do something, we want to do it right.

But, that means that the corollary also applies: people who want to cheap out on their dentistry or do things according to their dental insurance will likely be disappointed.  The reality of modern-day dentistry means that simplistic tooth-by-tooth approaches won’t produce the best results anymore, and dental insurances, which are more suited to a 1950’s style of dentistry, are not reflective of current best practices.

What does this mean in the long term?  Dentistry that lasts, which ultimately means fewer visits to our office for problems that people used to just accept as a part of life.

If you are seeking a no-compromises solution for long-neglected teeth and widespread problems, or simply looking for a new dental home, contact us!  We’d love to be your Barrie Dentist.