Danish Dentistry

Before I left the US, I read that to the rest of the world, Americans are “obsessed with dental hygiene”. I guess that’s true, given the amount of purely cosmetic work Americans have done. Some of it is really foolhardy. So, I was curious about what the Dentists are like here and…I’ve certainly had the chance to find out.

Dental work is not covered by the universal health care system in the same way that “regular” medical care is covered. The government pays some percentage, depending on the procedure, but it’s likely to be around 20%, so the individual pays the lion’s share of the bill. On top of that, many people have told me that dental work is very expensive. So I had some trepidation, but I was suffering due to a very pitted molar, so I got a recommendation from a friend for a place that was cheap but had a good reputation.

The first thing that surprised me was that I didn’t have to wait at all. It’s not like in the US where every dentist is running a profit-optimized four-chair office, and assistants do virtually everything. In contrast, this dentist was actually waiting for me. He was very pleasant, and asked me to sit down. He took one look at the tooth, and said it was no problem. He would just “patch it”. I asked if he thought an x-ray was necessary, and dismissed that idea, saying, “I can see — it’s fine.” He then applied some sort of plastic to the top of the molar, and then spent most of his time carefully drilling away at it to make sure I had a good bite. I really appreciated that, as I’ve been to too many dentists that leave you unable to comfortably close your mouth.

By the time I was walking out the door I could tell it was much better than before. The bill was 300kr, or about $50, which is fantastic, and would be a great in the US as well.

That was months ago, but this morning, after weeks of strange pains and temperature sensitivity, I woke up with a toothache. It’s a Saturday, so I looked up a weekend-and-holiday office, and tried to prepare myself for a staggering bill and a hole where the tooth used to be.

I waited for about an hour, as it was quite busy (they’re only open for 2 hours.) I finally got taken to the back and this time they did an x-ray. Given the pain and location, I was convinced that the first dentist had just patched the top of my tooth and left a cavity underneath. I was prepared to learn that the tooth was abscessing and that I’d have to have it pulled or have a root canal. Instead, the dentist told me that the problem was an old filling, and that fixing it was just a matter of drilling the old filling out and putting a temporary filling in. (I’d have to get a permanent one later, from my regular dentist.) I was relieved, but was still bugged because I was sure that the plastic fix that had been applied without an x-ray was the problem.

He grabbed a drill, told me to open my mouth, and said, “If you have pain, I’ll give you anesthesia.” Then he drilled that sucker out. It did hurt, but I figured, each time I was coping with a stab of pain, why not just tough it out and get it over with. After all, the worst part of going to the dentist (in my opinion) is the hours of having semi-slobbery speech-defect mouth.

So he drilled out the old one and installed a new one, all in probably three minutes. I got up afterwards, and asked if he was sure there wasn’t any swelling or problem with the roots (because I felt like my whole throat was swelling up this morning). He showed me the x-ray, and said everything looked fine, and that he was “pretty sure” he got the source of the problem. Then he added, with an ironic tone common to the Danes, “If that helps the pain, then that was the problem. If not, then the problem was something else.” I laughed, but it was a bit unnerving, knowing I still had practically the whole weekend ahead of me.

I paid the bill (about $90, which is incredibly cheap I think), and left. And as soon as I stepped out on the street I was wracked with a much worse pain than before. It came on strong and stayed that way. I thought about going back in, but I knew I’d have to make a huge fuss to avoid being put back in the waiting room. And besides, the reason I went in at all was mostly just to confirm that my jaw wasn’t about to explode or anything. I have plenty of painkillers at home (from previous dental episodes), so I figured I’d just dope myself up and wait until Monday. But by the time I took the two short train rides to get home, the pain was gone. Apparently it had been a delayed reaction to the drilling. But the pain was more than gone. I felt better than I’ve felt in two weeks. Now I know that this problem had been weighing me down for some time.

And I noticed something else: the tooth he filled was not the same one that took the plastic patch. So it looks like both dentists know what they’re doing, and both charge reasonable prices. Danish dentists seem to lack the fancy offices of their US counterparts, but it’s nice that they don’t try to take a dozen x-rays every time you visit, and they don’t just assume that you need painkillers every time they pick up an instrument.

The downside seems to be that dentists here don’t seem concerned at all about maintenance or prevention. I’ve heard SO many lectures from American dentists about the importance of cleaning and flossing, but here they seem to be mostly concerned about fixing problems and not about what led to the problems in the first place.

UPDATE: The pain came back with a vengeance. It turned out the molar was cracked lengthwise, and was “struggling for survival”. Rather than do a root canal, the 3rd dentist wanted to save it, so she filled and it looks like it’s going to be ok. But, if the first dentists had taken an x-ray, he most likely would have seen the cavity forming under the old filling and I could have avoided this incredibly painful weekend. But, I went for a cheap dentist, and I got one. This last dentist charged me 1000 kroner, or about $170, which is almost exactly what I paid the last time I got a filling in the US.