When you go to your family dentist, chances are that you are visiting a general dentist. This is a dentist that has completed four years of postgraduate dental school and has received the dental degree of DMD or DDS.

Upon graduation, I am planning to practice general dentistry. Some dentists choose to obtain two to six more years of education by entering a dental specialty. While general dentists do have a wide array of knowledge in all areas of clinical dentistry, specialists are focused on one specific niche inside of dentistry and often have more knowledge than general dentists in that specific area.

Thus, when a general dentist encounters a patient with a problem that is beyond his or her skill level to treat, the general dentist will refer their patient to a dental specialist. Dental Public Health — Public health dentists focus on achieving optimal dental health for their communities. The concept of public health dentistry is that they are treating communities as a whole, rather than individuals as their patients.

Public health dentists persuade communities to adopt better oral health policies, such as water fluoridation. There are a few public health dentists that work at my dental school. They write a lot of papers on how to improve dental health. They also teach us about the dental goals of federal programs such as Healthy People now called Healthy People Endodontics — Many patients are referred to endodontists when they need a root canal. They are concerened with the overall health of the dental pulp as well as the tissues that surround the tooth.

I went to an endodontist to have a root canal treatment done on one of my upper molars. The tooth had some curved roots, and my dentist thought that the procedure deserved the attention of a specialist.

Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology — Oral pathologists deal with all types of disease found in and around the oral cavity. If your dentist suspects that you have a disease, he or she might send out your radiographs and a biopsy of the suspected tissue to an oral pathologist.

Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology — This is the newest specialty and was adopted in Oral radiologists deal with the technique associated with taking radiographs and then diagnosing the radiographs that are made. They are experts in viewing radiographs and interpreting them.

Their eyes are trained to find the slightest discrepancies from normal and diagnose abnormalities in the facial structures.

Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery — You might better know oral and maxillofacial surgeons as the dentists that normally remove wisdom teeth. However, oral and maxillofacial surgeons do so much more. Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics — Orthodontists help their patients obtain optimal occlusion.

Occlusions is defined as the relationship of the teeth to one another. Orthodontists can correct crooked, misaligned teeth to give you an aesthetically pleasing smile. Pediatric Dentistry — This specialty was formerly called pedodontics. Pediatric dentists provide specialized care for children through adolescence. When I volunteered at a clinci before coming to dental school, we had a pediatric dentist come in to treat the children.

He was able to calm down many of the kids by telling them funny stories and using language that they would understand. Also, pediatric dentists are trained to recognize and treat dental problems that are specific to children.

Periodontics — Periodontists deal with dead cat bounce stock market today health of the structures around the tooth: If you start developing gum disease, a periodontist can help you get back to having healthy gums.

They can also perform gum surgery and gum grafts as well as place dental implants. Prosthodontics — Prosthodontists make dental specialty makes most money fake teeth. They are specialists in making crowns, bridges, partial dentures, and dentures. Many general dentists do all of these procedures and refer the more difficult cases out to prosthodontists. Do you have any comments or questions about dental specialist? Let us know in the comments section below!

Can regular family dentists do what the specialists can do? You say prosthodontics make crown and bridges but my regular dentist does that too and he is not a prosthodontist. Hi Cheryl — Thanks for your comments!

Family dentists also called General Dentists can do most everything that the specialists can do. The only difference is that the specialist has more training and they can deal with more complex cases. As a general dentist, I can place dental does maverick money makers work. I had a very bad experience with a dentist, he did orthodonic work on my daughter and was very unprofessional.

Along with that after 3 years of her having braces, and he refused to communicate with me about what his goal was with my daughter or what options we had when he was under her care. I did some research and found many, many complaints about him and that his license was suspended and he was on indefinite probation.

I found some information on him and al of the listings only list that he is a general dentist, I cannot find a specialty license. How can I verify this? Hi Diana — You acm forex trading platform free download try this dentist license verification page.

I wrote an article about whether or not general dentists can practice orthodontics that you might find interesting. You can try asking him for some money back saying that the second opinion pointed to bad dental work on his part. I hope that helps — Thanks for your comment, Diana. Let me know if you have any other questions. Hi Tom, i just started school for DA and i kind of went into this field without knowing anything about dentistry.

So far so good but what iv also been told is that no one wants to stay a DA forever. If i wanted to continue my education in dentistry, what would you recommend? I wanna knw more abt dentistry, its space relations i mean depts dat shld nt b too far4rm each oda. Nd oda relivant spaces apart 4rm d specialties, in d hospital. Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.

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The Dental Specialty that Earns the Most

Click here for instructions on how to enable JavaScript in your browser. Thanks for coming to Oral Answers. My name's Tom and I'm a dentist in rural Virginia.

I started this site to help you have a better understanding of dentistry so that you can make informed decisions regarding your dental treatment. If you have any questions, feel free to get in touch with me.

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TAGS Dental School Dental Specialists Dentistry Dentists. Apr 4, Aug 13, 3. I did get a second opinion on the work he did and it was not good.

Thank you that was written in such a way that anyone can understand it, simple and concise. Leave a Reply Cancel reply.

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