I went in for my annual dental exam today.
Dentist: You need a deep cleaning.
Statistician: I don't believe in deep cleaning.
Dentist: I only manage to clean the exposed part of the teeth. In your X-ray, we can see tartar buildup underneath the gums. Your teeth will fall out eventually if we don't clean it up now.
Statistician: My teeth feel fine, in fact, the best in years. I don't like the cost-benefit tradeoff of deep cleaning. All my friends who did it did not think it helped.
Dentist: It didn't work for them because they didn't floss. Let me tell you about my friend ...
Dentists seem to have special friends who like to tell them horror stories about how their teeth fell out at a young age. I am not interested in the worst-case scenario, nor a sample size of one, not randomly selected.
So I went home and googled "deep cleaning" and "clinical trials", and "deep cleaning" and "number needed to treat". No informative results except for more scare stories with no data. If you know data or experience related to this, please comment.
I would like to understand:
- How many people have to do "deep cleaning" for one patient to benefit from the procedure? (This is the "number needed to treat". I would not be surprised if this number is 100. A lot of medicines have high NNT, meaning we are buying lottery tickets.)
- How is the "benefit" of this procedure defined in the literature? My teeth will never fall out? They will fall out two days later than if I didn't do it? The "pocket" between my teeth and gums will reduce by 1%? 5%? 10%?
- If the "pockets" are reduced in size by 1%, how much longer will I live?
"I think my dentist doesn't like statisticians..."
I think you're extrapolating from too little data. At best we can say that there is A statistician that your dentist doesn't like. :-)
Posted by: John | 02/19/2010 at 02:03 AM
John: Andrew agrees with you!
Posted by: Kaiser | 02/28/2010 at 12:21 AM
Unfortunately, statistics cannot be used to accurately describe dentistry and health in general as they cannot be generalized into simple numbers.
Posted by: Thornhill Dentist | 04/24/2010 at 07:47 AM
You also have to take circumstances into account. The amount of statistics you may have gathered will be thrown up in the air once an unforeseen event makes its way into the equation.
Posted by: Hattiesburg MS Dentist | 07/15/2010 at 05:35 PM
Personally I'm not really that familiar with deep cleaning and I never experienced any. It's good that you researched about it but statistics doesn't always dictates it all. To make sure, maybe you can have second opinion from other dentist.
Posted by: Mexico Dentist | 11/04/2010 at 08:18 AM
Me too. I'm not familiar with that deep cleaning. But I also agree to them that statistic cannot tell it all.
Posted by: Dentist Garland Texas | 01/12/2011 at 10:26 PM
Where did you get your data? Whoa! This is a bit shocking, I mean ever since we we're young, we we're taught that our toothbrush cannot clean everything that is on our teeth. Can you imagine how bacteria will eat your teeth if you would not let your dentist do that deep cleaning?
Posted by: Fred Collinsworth | 04/06/2011 at 10:30 PM
Everybody's mouth is different. Remember, dentistry is part science, part art!
Posted by: Mexican Dentist | 06/28/2011 at 11:26 PM
Statistics is just a mere data from random people which can be dictated and do not really define the whole concept. I still believe in the our current dental system and its importance in us.
Posted by: USMLE Audio | 08/22/2011 at 10:47 AM
Deep cleaning serves as a basic treatment for periodontal diseases (tooth along the gum area). In deep cleaning, a dentist scrapes the plaque and tartar above and below the gum line, and then smooths the rough edges of the treated tooth. Only a few patients undergo surgery for deeper scaling.
Posted by: Edmund Falkner | 09/30/2011 at 09:50 AM