[ccwilson10]

Wife is a dentist. There certainly are practices where treatments are recommended as a function of money and cashflow (laser treatment and other "optional" treatments are a great example of this). However, crown / cavity recommendations are largely dependent on how aggressive that particular dentist's philosophy is. E.g. my wife only goes to her father for treatment because he focuses on saving teeth whenever possible.

Unlikely that a dentist would ever recommend filling cavities if they didn't believe it was necessary – they're not very profitable for practices. Crowns are sometimes recommended when a filling will suffice, but that's usually because crowns last ~10 years and fillings only delay the inevitable crown for a few years.

[asdff]

This is why I like going to dental schools faculty or student practices. They are all about saving the teeth if it can be saved and will need to see sufficient evidence in the imaging before moving forward with just about anything. Things seem to take longer and involve more appointments (e.g. i have to schedule a separate appointment with dept of radiology vs the private practice dentist walking me to the next room with the xray), but it seems like every decision involves multiple dental professors looking at my imagery or feeling up my teeth or gums before anything is done, which definitely boosts my confidence. I like having a committee and hearing them discuss the evidence in this war room setting when I'm laying there on the chair mouth open

[argonaut]

I've looked into this myself and one negative is that students still have some pressure to overtreat because students have graduation requirements (e.g. must do a certain number of fillings, crowns, etc.). Granted, having to run everything by a supervisor will eliminate the egregious cases.