Another question for you all about dentistry.?

I'm a dentist.

I'm sure you all know that medicine is an extremely diverse science that includes every single aspect of the body (mouth included). If it's related to the human body, it's part of medicine.

Not so with dentistry. Dentistry is defined as the evaluation, diagnosis, prevention and/or treatment (nonsurgical, surgical or related procedures) of diseases, disorders and/or conditions of the oral cavity, maxillofacial area and/or the adjacent and associated structures and their impact on the human body.

Hence, while a practicing dentist must know at minimum something about virtually every area of medicine, dentistry itself is limited to the head and neck (and mind you, only one dental specialist--oral surgeons--treat areas outside of the oral cavity).

Does a profession treating a very specific area of the body need to have NINE different specialists?

A doc for the gums. A doc for the roots. A doc for crowns. A doc for fillings. A doc for braces, etc. etc.

Dentists who specilaize in pain management also work outside of the oral cavity. Consider, if you had an invasive combination periodntal and endodontal infection in a hard to access area of the mouth would you want to be treated by the general dentist who may not have seen something like this before or the specialists who deal with these problems all day long. Are you serious, punk?

Thank you for minute description of your responsibilities and far reaching talents.

I'm a patient of a man who is a master mason and a great progressive Dentist who loves his profession and always explains options and procedures. He also is a forensic specialist who spent time at the World Trade Center examining teeth for identification purposes.

We discussed the metallurgy of gold crowns on one occasion.

Since melting and rolling of platinum and rhodium is my profession, I was interested to learn the metals added to gold crowns to make them hard enough to resist bending because of jaw pressure.

My parents had the resources to correct an over-bite in my teen yrs. It involved extraction of all wisdom teeth and two tops and bottoms. It allowed my over sized teeth to be corrected with braces. I've has a few root canals and in later yrs. crowns in molars.

Presently he's trying to convince my wife to have to have titanium supports to allow him to replace a front tooth she lost playing football at age 14. *Please correct me on this. He explained that there are many more tooth color selections when doing this procedure than replacement teeth with a bridge.

I take my hat off to you for all your wonderful service and care!