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Do you need a dentist visit every 6 months? That filling? The data is weak (arstechnica.com)

submitted 6 months ago by pageflight@lemmy.world to c/science@lemmy.world

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A 2020 Cochrane review that assessed the two clinical trials concluded that "whether adults see their dentist for a check‐up every six months or at personalized intervals based on their dentist's assessment of their risk of dental disease does not affect tooth decay, gum disease, or quality of life. Longer intervals (up to 24 months) between check‐ups may not negatively affect these outcomes." The Cochrane reviewers reported that they were "confident" of little to no difference between six-month and risk-based check-ups and were "moderately confident" that going up to 24-month checkups would make little to no difference either.

Likewise, Nadanovsky and his colleagues highlight that there is no evidence supporting the benefit of common scaling and polishing treatments for adults without periodontitis. And for children, cavities in baby teeth are routinely filled, despite evidence from a randomized controlled trial that rates of pain and infections are similar—about 40 percent—whether the cavities are filled or not.

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[-] Coreidan@lemmy.world 13 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

No reason to have shame. All I’m saying is if you think your dentist is fucking around you should get a better dentist instead of avoiding them your entire life.

There are clear benefits to getting regular checkups. You are blessed that you don’t have any problems. But that can change quickly with age.

You only get one set of teeth and you don’t know what you don’t know.

All it takes is a simple infection to fuck your shit up. Bite wing X-rays allows you to get ahead of issues like that instead of waiting until it’s an issue because by then it’s too late.

[-] TheDoozer@lemmy.world -3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

You only get one set of teeth

This is demonstrably false.

Edit: I think some people missed my joke. We all (almost all) have a set of teeth that fall out and another set comes in, so it's just funny that they used the phrase "you only get one...." like we use for eyes, or brain, when we, in fact, end up having the whole set replaced once in our lives.