In Defense of Preventative Maintenance

Many people view dentistry as a reactive way to fix a problem. Your tooth breaks so you get a filling or crown to fix it. You have a toothache so you get a root canal or extraction to stop the pain. But this approach underestimates the true value of dental care. A key point that gets pushed aside is that dental care is preventative care. You're not just solving a problem, but you're preventing many more from developing.

We often focus on addressing the needs that are right in front of us. The leaky roof, the broken car transmission, the sick child. With limited resources, both time and money, many of us are constantly putting out fires. But this type of short term, reactionary behavior limits our ability to achieve meaningful long term goals. In his best selling book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey writes about how we can achieve these meaningful goals by using the Eisenhower Matrix.

Einsenhower Matrix for Time Management

The Eisenhower Matrix (named after the former president) organizes tasks based on their importance in your life and how urgently they need to be completed. The tasks which are both important and urgent are ones that you ”Manage" (the fires that we're putting out). Those tasks that are unimportant, you either Avoid and delegate to someone else (if they are still urgent) or Limit (if they are not urgent). But you find the most effectiveness is doing the Focus tasks, those which are important but not yet urgent. This is because you can still accomplish these duties on your terms. You can prevent them from becoming bigger, more costly issues that hijack your life.

Deep cavities require more tedious and intensive procedures to fix as reflected by the costs on the right

Small water stains on the ceiling can be more easily and affordably fixed than extensive water damage. Regular car inspections can detect problems with critical systems before they prevent you from getting to work. The majority of dental recommendations exist in this important but not yet urgent square. This is shown in the photo above. As a cavity gets deeper into a tooth, more procedures will be needed to properly fix it. If the cavity is addressed before it gets close to the nerve and causes pain (i.e. before the problem is urgent) the tooth is 10-20 times cheaper to fix and much more tooth structure is preserved. Interesting to note, the cavity depicted in the photo is just the type that's detected on periodic x-rays at your check ups. They're very difficult to see from just looking at the tooth from the outside.

Too often, we view dental work as important only if it's urgent and don't appreciate the slew of problems that good dental work prevents. Getting a cavity fixed early prevents decay from spreading to the nerve and causing pain. Getting root canals and extractions on dead teeth (even if they don't hurt) prevents bacteria from spreading and causing infections. Getting scaling and root planing on the gums prevents teeth from getting loose and needing to be pulled.

A good dentist will not only communicate what dental work is needed, but explain its true preventative value. We want to limit the number of broken teeth, sleepless nights caused by tooth pain, and invasive reconstructive dental work experienced by our patients. Now not every emergency can be prevented; you can still bite into a fork and chip a tooth and even the most meticulously maintained molars can need a crown after 30,000 meals. But by investing in your care early and partnering with your dental team to maintain your oral health before it's urgent, you'll be able to enjoy meals with your family and smiles with your friends for years to come.