IMO if you can’t see it, you don’t treat it. If it could be a shadow cast by a normal concavity, or cervical burnout, where are you even drilling?
You don’t necessarily have to throw the other dentist under the ”greedy overtreater” bus, it can work to just tell the patient that you have a different philosophy of treatment, or that you’re inclined to watch and wait at this time. But I can’t justify doing something to a patient that isn’t called for to save the patient’s opinion of their other provider.
I agree with you on this but still feel like there is considerable doubt in my capability to diagnose when am trying to treatment plan or verify someone else's. Is it just me?
It’s not just you. I have too little confidence in my diagnosis skills, which is just shriveled every time someone goes “what about that?” And finds a PARL I’ve overlooked.
But I still have to rely on my own diagnosis. If I miss something, dental issues progress relatively slowly and I’ll probably catch it before it gets too bad. But if I drill where there’s no caries, I might set up a spiral of terrible sequelae.
Speaking from experience, unfortunately. I relied on someone else’s diagnosis to restore #9. After drilling into perfectly healthy tooth structure, I looked back at the radiograph and determined the “lesion” was probably a natural concavity combined with overlap of #10.
IMO if you can’t see it, you don’t treat it. If it could be a shadow cast by a normal concavity, or cervical burnout, where are you even drilling?
You don’t necessarily have to throw the other dentist under the ”greedy overtreater” bus, it can work to just tell the patient that you have a different philosophy of treatment, or that you’re inclined to watch and wait at this time. But I can’t justify doing something to a patient that isn’t called for to save the patient’s opinion of their other provider.
I agree with you on this but still feel like there is considerable doubt in my capability to diagnose when am trying to treatment plan or verify someone else's. Is it just me?
It’s not just you. I have too little confidence in my diagnosis skills, which is just shriveled every time someone goes “what about that?” And finds a PARL I’ve overlooked.
But I still have to rely on my own diagnosis. If I miss something, dental issues progress relatively slowly and I’ll probably catch it before it gets too bad. But if I drill where there’s no caries, I might set up a spiral of terrible sequelae.
Speaking from experience, unfortunately. I relied on someone else’s diagnosis to restore #9. After drilling into perfectly healthy tooth structure, I looked back at the radiograph and determined the “lesion” was probably a natural concavity combined with overlap of #10.