Dentists in UK Pulling More Teeth Instead of Fixing Them
Dentists in the UK are increasingly pulling patients teeth out (and replacing them with dentures) instead of fixing them after a recent government shake-up that causes them to lose money on more complex operations: this according to a recent analysis of the The Daily Telegraph.According to the study, this has been a trend over the last two years — since dentists were given a new contract from the NHS. The proportion of treatments involving dentures increased from 38 percent to 48 percent and tooth extractions increased from 7 percent to 8 percent of treatements carried out in 2007 and 2008. In Wales the proportion of treatments involving dentures increased from 8 percent to 9 percent.
Treatments including crowns (which are more expensive than extracting teeth and denture replacements) fell from 48 percent to 35 percent in England and from 44 percent to 35 percent in Wales.
To some degree these challenges are blamed on the new NHS contract, which some dentists claim does not cover the cost of carrying out complex treatments — which means the dentist is better off pulling the tooth and replacing it with a denture.
Read the full article at the Telegraph