Very simple, dental treatments houses all the different fields of dentistry there is:

• Missing teeth (dental implants, dentures, bridges…)
• Teeth straightening (braces, clear aligners)
• Cosmetic dentistry (teeth whitening, veneers, smile make overs…)
• General dental care (fillings, root canals, extractions…)
• Preventative dentistry (check ups, scale & polishes, oral healthcare advice)

We are also seeing a trend with more dental practices offering facial aesthetics, such as: lip plumping, dermal fillers…

Why Would You Need Dental Treatment?

This is very much a loaded question as it really depends on your own individual needs. In the first instance, preventative dentistry is extremely important for everyone. As the old saying goes, which teeth to brush? The ones you want to keep.

Attending a dentist on a regular basis (every 6 months unless advised otherwise) plays an important role in looking after your teeth. The sooner a potential problem is picked up, the solution will often be quicker and less costly to fix.

Let’s Play Devil Advocate – What’s The Worst That Can Happen…

If you have a dental problem and it is left to get worse e.g. a hole in your tooth. Bacteria can enter your tooth, leading to pain. The pain is not the only thing to worry about. The bacteria can kill the nerve of the tooth (requiring a root canal treatment to attempt to save the tooth). The success rate of a root canal is around 95% and not all teeth are savable – which may mean you need to have the tooth removed (an extraction).

This would then create a further knock on problem of what to do with the gap you now have in your mouth. Option 1 would be to accept the gap and leave it as it is (depending on where the tooth is, it may not affect the aesthetics of your smile). The other options may include dental implants, partial dentures, bridges etc.

The one thing to consider about leaving the gap alone, is that the surrounding teeth can be effected. When you lose a tooth you will experience bone resorption. This is when the bone where the gap is starts to fade away. How quick this happens will vary from person to person. The main cause for concern is that it can cause the surrounding teeth to feel loose and eventually lead to further tooth loss. The other impact it can have is that the surrounding teeth may start to shift (leaning towards the gap) causing your teeth to become crooked (as the tooth that was there was stopping those movements from happening).

As you can see, there are knock on effects to dental complications, which will take time, money and effort to get resolved. One thing we haven’t mentioned but definitely deserves to be, is the fact that not only are the dentists looking at your teeth, but they also look at your overall dental health. Oral cancer is one of the things dentists can pick up on and make the necessary referrals. The sooner it is diagnosed, the better chances you have at making a full recovery.

Time To Crunch Some Numbers

To put it into perspective, if you did go down the route of some of those treatments – the averages prices you may pay (privately):

• Root canal – (around £450)
• Tooth extraction – (around £110)
• Partial denture – (around £650)
• Dental bridge – (around £800)
• Dental implants (around £2,500)
• Rough cost bracket – (around £1,210 – £3,060)

How much you may have to pay can quickly jump up depending on what has happened and also what you want to achieve (e.g. a removable solution vs a fixed).

When you put this into direct comparison with preventative costs, it really makes sense to make going to the dentist one of your priorities (at least twice a year).

• Dental check up x 2 – (around £160)
• Scale & Polish x 2 – (around £120)
• Composite filling (to fill up the hole in the tooth) – (around £120)
• Rough cost – (around £400)

On the lower end of the rough cost bracket (above), it would cost you roughly 202.5% more than the yearly preventative costs, and the best news is, most practices offer some form of dental plan to help lower your preventative care!