Forums allow us to be immersed in a sea of ideas, which I think drives forward our profession at a rate never before dreamed of.
It also allows us to comment on others work in ways that were never before possible.
Much discussion will be about what is considered the success of dentistry and what won’t be. Of course, we try to predict this using scientific experiments or studies, but often these provide the smallest snippet of information and aren’t always possible to extrapolate into practice.
However, beyond the limitations of science, there is a further factor that vastly influences success rates:
What you define as success in dentistry.
A frequent comment in dentistry is that patient’s cannot be relied upon to define the success of dentistrybecause they do not understand it. Instead, we attempt to measure the success of dentistry through various standardised measures.
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- Longevity of the restoration.
- Retention of the tooth.
- Radiographic success.
- Frequency of intervention.
- Lowering population DMFS scores, and so on.
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The problem with many of these measures, is that they are profession focused. And they often ignore that the end customer of dentistry is the patient, not the dentists. We could go back to our earlier argument that we know what is best for the population or the patient because of our skill and training, but then we delve into elitism. Elitism often starts out with supposed best intentions, however due to human nature, more often than not, elitism ends up doing things that favour the elites themselves.
Further, we could argue that if such ideas are correct, then it should be applied to us as well.
Most dentists do not know automotive engineering. Perhaps they should only purchase cars approved by a particularly well know automotive engineer? Perhaps we should only be allowed to spend our money on things that are approved by a well-respected group of financial planners? Perhaps we should have all our dinners checked by a group of dietary planners (despite the fact that the science of diet turns on its head every decade and everything that was right becomes wrong).
There are very few examples where elites consistently make the best choices for the population
over the long term, unless they are held accountable by the population.
Which is why I think it is the patient’s values which vastly influence the success of dental treatment.
