General Dentist pulling a tooth????? - Dental Health Message Board

india22 · 05-11-2001, 09:04 AM

Tooth #13 needs to be pulled, due to a root canal that went bad: there seems to be a major infection going on.

Anyway my General dentist said he would pull the tooth and when I acted surprised, he got offended and said thats what general dentist do.

I've had other teeth pulled, but only by an oral surgeon. Is a general dentist capable of doing this? I know my general dentist has had to send me to many specialist for work in my mouth, is it a possibility that he want to get more money by not sending me to an OS.

And even if he sent the insurance comapny the pre-treatment work, can I still request to be sent to an oral surgeon

Miranda · 05-11-2001, 04:42 PM

Yes your general dentist is quite capable of extracting a tooth/teeth however if you don't feel comfortable with that you can ask for a referal to an Oral Surgeon. In fact you don't need his/her referal you can ask someone else or look one up in the phone book. As far as your insurance goes the estimate is for the treatment not particular to any dentist so you can go wherever you like/Please note though that typically an oral surgeon will charge more-in fact a dentist sets his/her own fees although most follow their regions "fee guide" pretty closely so ask before the work is done if cost is an issue.
Miranda

martay25 · 05-13-2001, 09:42 AM

General dentists are perfectly capable of doing extractions, some regularly send patients to oral surgeons because they don't want to do them or because they may think it could be a somewhat difficult extraction. I worked for one dentist who rarely sent his patients to oral surgeons he did almost any extraction by himself, he actually set aside Friday morning for doing large extraction jobs such as third molars(wisdom teeth) or pulling teeth for dentures. I also worked for another dentist who did several extractions a day, so yes it is very normal for general dentists to do extractions.