Thousands of people have been duped out of hundreds of thousands of dollars by dentists recommending unnecessary dental surgery.
Patients seeking advice from their dentists for crooked, chipped or stained teeth may hear from disingenuous practitioners they need extensive replacement implants.
This could cost them up to $65,000 for teeth that could have possibly been saved with more routine – and affordable – procedures such as root canals or fillings.
Oral surgeons have described the trend of recommending unnecessary dental work as a ‘horror show’ and report seeing five or more clients every month looking for second opinions.
The providers who tell patients they need to extract and replace their teeth have a considerable financial incentive, however. Insurance typically does not cover implants, and dentists could earn tens of thousands of dollars per patient.
And with a shortage of qualified oral surgeons at thousands of clinics across the US, a large share of doctors performing unnecessary procedures are not adequately trained to do them correctly.
Implant surgery entails removing teeth and replacing them with a metal post anchored in the jaw. The post is then topped with a prosthetic tooth, often a porcelain crown.
For those needing more extensive replacements, options like ‘full-arch’ or ‘All-on-4’ implants allow for replacing the entire top or bottom row of teeth, or in more extensive cases, replacing all 32 of a patient’s teeth.
In 10 interviews with ProPublica, dentists and surgeons with expertise in implants said they had provided second opinions to patients who had previously been told they needed implants.
However, the dentists said they eventually determined implants were not necessary.
Each dental specialist said they’d seen many patients who had been recommended for full-arch implants by other dentists despite their teeth being treatable with conventional dentistry.
Becky Carroll from New Jersey was hoping to undergo an upper full-arch procedure, replacing 16 teeth.
The 52-year-old was missing a few teeth and others were stained.
She smiled with her mouth closed, embarrassed by her lackluster smile, and was told the only way to improve her smile was with implants.
She saved, and borrowed $31,000 for a procedure to implant new, artificial teeth at a ClearChoice Dental Implant Center in New Jersey in 2021, having seen an ad that promoted getting a brand new smile in just one day.
But her procedure was the beginning of a years-long journey toward remedying the botched implants, ProPublica and CBS reporting revealed.
Ms Carroll woke up during her procedure, feeling all of the pain that comes with having screws drilled into your jaw and cheekbones.
Then, when the procedure was over, Carroll’s prosthetic teeth were so misaligned she was unable to chew for more than two years until she could afford corrective surgery at another clinic, according to a sworn deposition from her lawsuit against ClearChoice.
She said: ‘I thought implants would be easier, and all at once, so you didn’t have to keep going back to the dentist. But I should have asked more questions … like can they save these teeth?’
Thousands of lawsuits have been filed nationwide that, like Ms Carroll’s, allege implant patients have experienced painful complications that have required expensive, time consuming, and painful corrective surgery.
Other lawsuits alleged dentists at some implant clinics have persuaded, pressured, or forced patients to remove teeth unnecessarily.
William Giannobile, the dean of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine said: ‘There are many cases where teeth, they’re perfectly fine, and they’re being removed unnecessarily.
‘I really hate to say it, but many of them are doing it because these procedures, from a monetary standpoint, they’re much more beneficial to the practitioner.”
He had seen ‘dozens’ of patients looking for second opinions after being recommended for unnecessary implants.
He added : ‘I see many of these patients now that are coming in and saying, “I’ve been seen, and they are telling me to get my entire dentition — all of my teeth — extracted.” And then I’ll take a look at them and say that we can preserve most of your teeth.’
Despite their cost, implants have become increasingly popular. Sales have grown by more than six percent annually since 2010, reaching more than 3.7million implants sold in the US by 2022, according to a 2023 report from iData Research, a healthcare market analysis firm.
While implants have been performed for half a century and can be a life changing for people with missing teeth, many see them as a quick fix – a fallacy, according to doctors.
Paul Rosen, a Pennsylvania periodontist who has worked with implants for over 30 years, said: ‘You can’t just have an implant placed and go off riding into the sunset.
‘In many instances, they need more care than teeth because they are not teeth.’
Aside from the monetary damage of unnecessary implants, the procedure comes with a host of risks, including infection at the root around the gum and bone around the implants.
George Mandelaris, a Chicago-area periodontist and member of the American Academy of Periodontology Board of Trustees, said: ‘Just because somebody can afford implants doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re a good candidate.
‘When an implant has infection, or when an implant has bone loss, an implant dies a much quicker death than do teeth.’
