r/Dentists

TLDR: dentist retiring & selling the practice where I work thinks I stand to make big gains if I stay, but I have an opportunity to leave for more moderate gains right now. Feeling guilty about leaving, but the offer is guaranteed and nothing is for sure if I stay. Help

Ive been at the same practice doing insurance verification, billing, and schedule for the last 13 years. Unfortunately we're only open three days a week, which just isn't enough for me to cover bills. I recently got a full time job offer at a new practice with a new dentist that is much closer to my house, AND I would be given free reign over managing everything on the administrative side (very exciting to me). Here's where the problem lies:

I told the dentist and his wife (the manager) that I would be leaving, and they were super alarmed. Apparently they're planning on selling the practice at the end of the year, and they were relying on me to maintain the continuity as the patients all transfer to the new dentist. I know all the patients and they know me, and I'm sure it would help them if I stayed on.

Dentist and wife said they'd increase my hours to full time till the sale goes through, and they seem to think I'd be guaranteed to keep those hours and be the office manager for the new dentist, but they don't even know who they'll be selling to yet. I don't want to mess up their retirement sale, but I'd have to give up a for-sure opportunity for a maybe opportunity.

Would I be seen as a valuable enough asset to a prospective new owner that I can reasonably expect the same salary (or more) and a semi promotion to front office head? Is it worth staying? Our patient loyalty is currently INCREDIBLE. 99% collections, don't have to be in network for any of them etc. so a buyer MIGHT be very keen to keep me on, but that's just speculation at this stage.

What should I do? I care about the dentist and wife a lot, but I don't want to fuck up this new opportunity without any guarantees that staying would be comparable.

Hi everyone🙋🏽‍♀️

I'm a dentist from India (BDS) and I'm considering pursuing a Master's degree in Germany. I've been reading about the recognition process, including the Fachsprachprüfung (FSP) and Kenntnisprüfung (KP), but I'd really like to hear from people who have gone through it.

If you're an Indian dentist (or know someone who is) currently studying or working in Germany, I'd really appreciate your insights.

I have a few questions:

Is pursuing a Master's in Germany worth it as an international dentist?

How difficult are the FSP and KP in practice?

Were you able to work while preparing for these exams?

Did you experience any discrimination or major challenges during the process?

What level of German did you have before moving?

I've already done some research online, but personal experiences would be incredibly helpful.

Thank you in advance💖

Based on this article, Trends in Dentists' Income, Revenue, and Hours Worked, it appears that the inflation-adjusted salary for dentistry has steadily gone down over the last 15 years (page 4-6). The salary for most other healthcare professions seems to either go up with inflation or manage to keep pace with it. The craziest part is that right now, with all the Delta Dental squeeze and other insurances refusing to increase reimbursements, add that to increasing material and staff expenses, dentistry seems to be a career with little salary progression.

Yes, there are ways for dentists to adapt. However, I'm just talking about the natural salary progression, not ways to increase it by being more productive, doing more specialty procedures etc. Just apples-to-apples comparison. A nurse working a set 32 hours a week will see substantial salary increases in 10 years, while a dentist with the same set hours will possibly make less both nominally and inflation-adjusted (higher overhead, low insurance reimbursement rates). My healthcare costs skyrocketed over the past 5 years, while my nominal income hasn't increased materially in that timeframe. Thoughts?

Hi

Any dentists here? My niece is a UK national and wants to get into dentistry . She is considering studying in Pakistan and then moving back to the UK. Has anyone taken this route? What is the equivalent requirements and acceptance?

I'm a dental resident in a combined endodontics/restorative specialty program, looking to buy my first pair of loupes. I've been looking into Lumadent, Orascoptic, Zumax, and Univet but haven't decided on what to get yet.

I want to get ergo loupes to help better maintain my posture. I have congenital scoliosis - it's a congenital spinal cord deformity where my spinal cord is curved instead of straight. So it's especially important for me to maintain good posture.

A colleague was telling me that the declination angle for loupes really matters - he has flip-up ergo loupes with a declination angle of 45 degrees and he said he feels like he has to bend his neck slightly to see certain angles when working, which causes strain on his neck and back. He said he wished his loupes had a higher declination angle.

Is it true that the higher the declination angle, the less you have to bend? I thought all ergo loupes had a declination angle of around 40-45 degrees. I didn't know it could be higher than that.

I'm 9 days post op after having tooth #30 extracted. It was a pretty difficult extraction since the tooth had to be cut into sections and broken apart to get it out.

So far everything seems to be healing well. I have little to no pain and I haven't had any major issues. The only thing that's worrying me is the area behind tooth #31. It's  swollen? It feels raised enough that I can't fully close my mouth anymore. When I try to bite down, that swollen area hits the roof of my mouth before my teeth on the other side can touch.

The area feels mostly soft but there's also one spot that feels kind of firm with a slightly sharp edge kinda on the side of it. I've already had three wisdom teeth removed, and my dentist never mentioned another tooth back there when looking at my X-rays before the extraction of #30  so I don't think it's a tooth.

Has anyone else experienced this after a difficult extraction? Is this kind of swelling normal, and does it eventually go down? Before the extraction even with my pretty severe underbite, I could close my mouth normally and chew on the opposite side without any issues now I can longer do so without some discomfort, so this has me a little concerned

Hi, i am a third year student studying in a good bds college in india, i am sure of pursuing OMFS abroad. Please if anybody could tell me the pathway of getting into USA or Australia through BDS pathway to become an OMFS in these countries and could you please underline the cost required for these pathways. Your help would be greatly appreciated 🙏

I had a root canal two months ago, and have since had the permanent crown placed (placed over 2 weeks ago).

Since my root canal I have had pain when chewing. Especially with soft sticky foods. I can eat Doritos and crunchy sourdough bread without pain. But if it’s a soft cake, I’m in pain. Chewing gum, pain. Beans… pain.

Why?!

I have been in contact with the endodontist from the beginning and he keeps saying to give it more time. Now he has said to wait until August. He hasn’t bothered to see me or felt any urgency to see me. 🫠

I have had this exact pain since the root canal. So two months with zero improvement. Only $7,000 poorer. 🫠

I am a dental hygienist of 25 years. My doc is now on his second consulting team…. I am working on a masters in health care administration to learn to bridge the gap between business and healthcare. I would love to help dental businesses but in a way that flows with the business and not causing your staff to quit due to major organizational and cultural changes. I am curious what has worked best?

Okay this might be very silly, but I'm a second year dental student struggling with this. I can barely see anything back there, then there's airotor water and foggy mirror and what not. And it looks so different inside the phantom head and when I take it out.

So I kept telling myself that I'll learn over time till my last practical, i got told that my work is the worst, and how is it even possible to make a cavity this bad and A LOT of other stuff. I ended up crying in class itself (not relevant, I just needed to tell it somewhere, it's affecting me a lot since I'm decent at mandibular teeth)

Anyways, i do wish to learn get better at it, but now I'm scared of even working on maxillary molars and I'll be cooked if they give one of those teeth for exam.

So please, professionals, help me out. How do I get better at this?

I'm an OM in a single Dr. practice and our dentist passed away very unexpectedly. Ultimately the practice is headed towards being sold but I am hoping anyone that has been through a similar situation can offer any advice.

So far the following steps have been taken:

Staff has been notified

Cancelled Monday/Tuesday schedules, will likely be cancelling the entire week.

Scheduled a meeting with a dentist to discuss covering the office on Monday

Emailed CPA and benefits coordinating company to discuss next steps on Monday

Will be visiting the bank on Monday with the surviving spouse to figure out bank access to ensure we can process payroll for next week

I know there will be a lot more involved in the coming weeks and any advice or guidance from anyone that's gone through something similar would be greatly appreciated. Definitely in uncharted territory here and just want to support the staff and family left behind to the best of my ability.

Hi. I am a man (48 years old), dentist, with a rather classic style (shirt, blazer, dress pants, tassel loafers). And for a long time, I would like to have both ears pierced with real diamonds (identical whose worn by women). My wife encourages me, she finds it refined and sexy, and quite feminine, and she would like to choose me real feminine diamonds. But I am a bit stressed because I know that everyone (my patients and colleagues at the medical office) will be very surprised to see me with both ears pierced with shinny and feminine diamonds. How will I be perceived ? THANK YOU very much for your advice.

Both my front teth were removed and replaced about 15 years ago (don't get hit in the mouth, kids!). I've never had a issue up until today.

The left front tooth has, seeming randomly, started hurting a lot. It started last night as a dull ache and today has continued as that ache but is a sharp pain when touched by my natural bite, by eating, etc. Tylenol seems to help but not a ton. Nothing looks wrong in the mirror. The gum doesn't hurt. The teeth around it, including the right side replacement, don't hurt at all.

Any ideas on what might have happened? I'm guessing I need to see a dentist, but given it's the weekend I can't get into mine until Monday at the earliest. Any ideas on what I can do for some relief until then?

26F. I had several deep fillings between January and March.

Update: I ended up going back to the ER and they admitted me overnight. The CT with contrast showed broad swelling/edema on the left side of my neck extending from my jaw to my thyroid cartilage, but no drainable abscess, no airway compromise, and only reactive lymph nodes. They’re treating me with IV antibiotics, steroids, IV fluids, and ketorolac (Toradol) for pain. Swallowing has still been difficult, but they’re monitoring me and I’m hoping the swelling starts coming down.

After two days of really bad pain radiating into my jaw and other teeth, I went to my dentist because he had warned me after my deep fillings that I could eventually need another root canal. He referred me to an endodontist. At my first appointment, he couldn’t pinpoint which tooth was causing the pain, so he wanted me to wait until it became more obvious.
The next morning I woke up and one tooth was painful to bite on or even touch. I went back, he repeated the cold test, and said the nerve was dead. He performed the root canal. After numbing my cheek twice, he had to inject anesthetic directly into the tooth because the nerve was still alive enough to feel it. That was the worst pain I’ve ever experienced, although it only lasted about five seconds.
When I got home, I expected things to start improving, but instead I started shaking uncontrollably and felt like I had the flu. I had already been dealing with episodes of a high heart rate and had told the endodontist it was elevated during the procedure. Usually my heart rate comes back down when I sit or lie down, but this time it just kept climbing. At home it was staying around 140-160 while resting and reached 188 when I stood up, so I went to the ER.
The ER kept me overnight because my heart rate would not come down. They did blood work, imaging, an EKG, and an echocardiogram. They said my heart looked healthy and believed the infection in my tooth could have been causing the tachycardia. They gave me metoprolol to lower my heart rate. Around the same time, I called my endodontist because I had developed swelling in my cheek, under my tongue, and into my neck with painful swallowing. He prescribed liquid amoxicillin.
After I started the antibiotic, my heart rate improved significantly and I haven’t needed to continue taking the metoprolol. However, I’m now about 40 hours into the amoxicillin, taking ibuprofen and Tylenol every six hours, and today the pain is still extremely severe. I’m still very swollen (it doesn’t seem worse than yesterday, but it’s definitely noticeable), my cheek is sore to the touch, swallowing is painful, and I haven’t been able to sleep because of the pain. The pain is in my neck under my tongue on the left side, the gums around my tooth, my actual tooth, my cheek and jaw.

My questions are:
Is this still within the expected range about 40 hours after starting antibiotics and having a root canal on an infected tooth?
When would you normally expect the pain and swelling to start improving?
At what point would you become concerned that the root canal has failed or the tooth needs to be extracted?
What symptoms would make you recommend returning to the ER over the holiday weekend instead of continuing to wait for the antibiotics to work?

This has honestly been one of the scariest weeks of my life, so I’m just trying to understand what is normal and what isn’t.

I haven’t been to a dentist in 22 years and have no plans for that to change ever.

I’m 40 with no teeth pain or mouth issues

My teeth are whiteish and don’t look gross

And finally my feeling is if it’s not broken don’t fix it

With this all being said, nothing said here is going to sway me to suddenly change my mind about the whole thing, so don’t look to convince me to go see one

I’m just asking if this kind of thing bothers you to hear?

I have been experiencing various molar issues since September of 2025. It has so far already led to one extraction in January and now another one scheduled next week. I am essentially losing teeth, and my quality of life (nonstop anxiety and pain), meanwhile multiple dentists, endodontists and periodontists have not been able to give me conclusive answers on what exactly has been going on.

As a patient, this honestly leaves me in a panic. I know dentists are not all-knowing gods but if I have tooth pain I would like to assume a dentist can tell me why it's happening, and if not that dentist, then other dentists or specialists. I have already spent thousands of dollars on dentists outside my insurance, on x-rays, on treatments like root canals, laser treatment on my gums, and as I said, an extraction. Nobody is giving me any refund of this money even though none of these treatments have helped my issue. I'm not getting the $300 for laser treatment back even though my tooth continued to hurt one week later. I'm not getting my $700 back on the root canal for a tooth that is now being extracted shortly after. I am not getting my $300 back for a 3D x-ray that the dentist ordered me to get, which then told him absolutely nothing about what is going on.

What am I as a patient supposed to do in this situation? Seriously, what do I do? I can't just keep getting a 4th, 5th, 6th opinion. I can't keep pulling out my teeth. What do I do?

About a year ago, I started building a fairly simple AI system to check the quality of intraoral scans.

The original idea was basically:

Upload a 3D dental scan → detect technical problems → tell the user whether it should pass, be reviewed, or be rescanned.

It has… escalated slightly.

I’m now training what is becoming a native 3D dental foundation model.

Instead of having completely separate models for every dental task, the idea is to build one shared model that develops a deeper internal understanding of dentition.

The same model is learning to understand:

• where individual teeth are
• tooth vs gum segmentation
• FDI tooth identity
• quadrant, side, tooth type and position
• relationships between neighbouring teeth
• upper vs lower arches
• prepared teeth
• dense preparation geometry
• margin localisation
• dense mesh defects
• confidence and uncertainty
• paired upper/lower arch relationships
• occlusal geometry

The important bit is that these aren’t just isolated outputs.

The heads are designed to constrain and support one another.

A tooth shouldn’t just be called an UR6 because one classifier says so. Its arch, side, quadrant, position, neighbouring teeth and sequence should all agree.

The latest mid-training model is already:

• detecting around 97% of teeth
• numbering teeth at roughly 87–92% accuracy on held-out arch data
• producing dense preparation segmentation at around 0.74 IoU with 0.93 recall
• generating pseudo-labels at roughly 0.94 FDI accuracy on the labels it chooses to commit
• reaching around 0.98 binary segmentation IoU on committed pseudo-labels
• correctly refusing to label unfamiliar or out-of-distribution data rather than confidently producing garbage

That last point is probably the part I’m most interested in.

The aim isn’t just to build a model that predicts.

The aim is to build a model that knows when it understands a scan well enough to act as a teacher.

If that works, the model can begin generating high-quality labels for thousands of previously unlabeled scans, creating a pseudo-label flywheel where each generation helps create the training data for the next.

The roadmap now looks roughly like this:

Foundation model → dense defect and margin refinement → paired occlusal intelligence → pseudo-label expansion → downstream dental applications

The first commercial application is still likely to be scan quality control.

But increasingly, I don’t think the real asset is the QC application.

I think the real asset may be the shared 3D dental intelligence underneath it.

Potentially, the same learned representation could support:

• scan QC
• tooth identification
• restorative workflows
• orthodontic measurements
• occlusal analysis
• prep and margin tools
• developer APIs
• applications I haven’t even thought of yet

I’m building this largely on my own, in my spare time, without a traditional software engineering or machine learning background.

My actual background is 20+ years in dental technology and digital dentistry, which means I understand the dental problem far better than I understand why anyone thought it was sensible to let me near a 35-head neural network.

I’m posting this because I’m genuinely curious:

Does the idea of a reusable native-3D dental foundation model make sense to people working in AI, computer vision, dentistry or medical technology?

And perhaps the bigger question:

Why do most dental AI systems still appear to be built as separate task-specific tools rather than around one shared learned representation of dental anatomy?

I’d genuinely love people to challenge the idea.

Please bear with me [29 F] on this, it’s been something I’ve been trying to grapple with to the point that I’m turning here for advice 😭

Due to numerous family member health crises, I was not able to enroll in grad school after graduating college, so I am pretty late to enrollment in general. I got accepted into both Optometry and Dental programs. I’m trying to decide what to go into. I have done extensive shadowing of both, and I love both fields for different reasons.

Dentistry

Pros:

- As close as you can come to an intersection of Art and Medicine (I love Art, I would’ve gone into it professionally if that had been a viable career path for me)
- Deals with aesthetics and improving people’s confidence
- A solid salary, maybe ~$50k more than Optometry with a higher ceiling to earn as well (let’s say $150-250k)
- I’m in a situation where it would be three years instead of four years, saving me one year – given my age, saving that one year feels like a pretty significant difference since I’m quite late to grad school

Cons:

- Tuition is half a million dollars (I am fortunate enough that with personal savings combined with familial contribution, my family should be able to help me pay for most, if not all, of it over the four years… but this is still very significant)
- Back problems and hearing loss – a lot of dentists develop both over time. I already have some mild back pain from scoliosis

Optometry

Pros:

- Cleaner work environment, no emergency calls or dealing with invasive procedures involving blood and saliva
- Also a highly rewarding field, helping people maintain their most important sense
- Much lower tuition, probably a quarter of dental school
- Significantly more flexibility - optometrists can pick up locum/fill-in work at offices that need coverage on a day-to-day basis without committing to a fixed schedule

Cons:

- I don’t know if it’s quite as mentally engaging as dentistry - there seems to be a lot of repetition with vision exams unless you’re specializing
- Less money with a much lower ceiling for long-term salary prospects (let’s say $130-150k)
- 4 years instead of 3
- The field skews very heavily female, and if I’m honest, I’d prefer a more balanced professional environment day to day

More discussion:

I think vision is our most important sense by a long shot, and helping people maintain theirs would be a deeply rewarding career. I’ve also had my own vision journey, having very poor sight myself. At the same time, I love the artistic aspect of dentistry, the fact that you see patients with more regularity, and that it too is an incredibly fulfilling field. What I love about both is that they’re careers where I can make a real positive difference in someone’s life and feel fulfillment in what I wake up to do every day, while also earning a comfortable salary.

If it weren’t for the tuition, I think dentistry would offer more return for the same years of education - and one less year in my case. As someone who wants to have a family someday, I know I would be fully comfortable supporting them on a single dental salary, though I’m less certain I could say the same for optometry.

On flexibility and family:

One of my long-term goals is to eventually be a full-time mom. I had a difficult experience being raised by people who weren’t my parents, and being present for my own children has been a deeply held value since I was young. With that in mind, optometry’s locum/fill-in structure is a meaningful pro - I could step away and return to work on my own terms without being locked into a fixed patient schedule. Dentistry requires more continuity in patient care, so even part-time work would mean set days with less flexibility.

I also want to note that I have no interest in owning a private practice - the added business management and responsibility would conflict with my priority of being present for my family. This actually lowers dentistry’s earning ceiling for me personally, since practice ownership is one of the primary ways dentists grow their income significantly beyond an associate salary.

I also need to think honestly about whether I would have broken even on dental school’s tuition by the time I transition to part-time or stop working to raise children, given how significant that cost is.

To summarize:

These are two amazing choices that I worked extremely hard to get accepted into, and neither is the “wrong” choice - but I want to go into the one that is the best fit for me as an individual. Whatever I choose, I’m going to dedicate myself to it fully and make sure I give my patients the absolute best care I can. I’d love to hear from anyone with insight or experience in either field. Thank you in advance!

I have extremely neglected my teeth over the past 15+ years. I’m 36 now and I think I have an abscess in one of my upper front teeth. My right nostril has some swelling and the area between my gum and nose hurts when I press it. The tooth feels like it has pressure with no pain, and my gums oddly have no pain, just my lip and nose area near the tooth.

I plan to make an appointment with a dentist, but I know they are going to give a long list of things wrong with my teeth. The problem I think the dentist may have is that I only want work done on teeth causing pain. My teeth are so bad my upper-corner teeth are decayed down to gums, one of my bottom corner teeth is also decayed down to gum. I have a severe cavity that drains foul smelling blood, but I think the tooth nerve is still alive somehow. I chew on my left side when eating because of the cavity. I have come this far without any pain caused by my teeth, but now I know I’m going to have to seek treatment, but I’m worried dentists won’t see me since I prefer to only pay for work that gets rid of dental pain. Is this something dentists are used to?

P/s now that I know I can definitely have dental pains I have started brushing and flossing twice a day. I now see daily brushing and flossing as like making a bowel movement - have to get rid of the waste in my mouth like my gut does