TMJ 'dysfunction' - Health implications

A post in the newspaper The Guardian today carries an article headed:
Dentists would not treat my toothache – now my health has been wrecked for ever
"I was fit and healthy when I first felt pain in a molar. After numerous dentists and doctors left it untreated, there were knock-on effects throughout my body. Today I am in constant pain and look almost unrecognisable........."

COMMENT: The patient goes onto essentially complain that the fear of the GDC and the workings of the defence councils prevent dentists from exploring dental pain adequately in case they are construed to have been overzealous with any of their treatments. To avoid any adverse outcome, the patients often get referred to maxillofacial or oral surgeons, who appear to recognise little about the actual cause of the patients' pain and often either give them a splint to wear or refer them for onward psychiatric care. Also, the GDC is much less likely to punish the surgeons, so the dentists can evade responsibility.

For a dentist to explore toothache without proper radiographical evidence is inviting a dentists demise from his profession. X-rays rarely show a complete picture, and a dentist must rely on his intuition and experience. Pain from a necrotic nerve does not even need radiographical evidence and is straightforward to diagnose, but would the GDC leave a dentist alive if he had such audacity as to work without radiographical evidence?

The GDC would strike a dentist off the register for far lesser offences than even those shown in this article. They have whole armies of legal staff who are pouring over the tiniest infraction by a dentist to make a mountain out of a mole hill and drag dentists through years of uncalled-for torture. It appears that all the subscription funds they receive from members go to law firms. It, in fact, appears to be a front for law firms to take in most of the moolah!

The only apt solution is to deregulate dentistry so that anyone with the appropriate training can provide certain subskills to patients. If there is any infraction, there are courts of law and not kangaroo courts to admonish dentists.

Many dentists have spent a lifetime on their training. The government has spent perhaps a couple of million pounds training each one. The GDC will happily step in and wipe the dentist off the face of the earth. Some have committed suicide. Many patients' suffering has never been taken into account, as you can read in the GDC Google Trustpilot reviews.

Dentistry is actually a vast subject and encompasses patient health from head to toe. If a dentist dare not venture even within the mouth freely without inviting immense wrath from the GDC, how can they venture into the general health of the patients, which is the absolute must be for the maintenance of patient's general health?

This patient in the quoted article has bodily symptoms which are always attributable to slight asymmetries that may have got introduced through extensive root canal therapy and perhaps crowns. This aspect is widely explored in this forum, which this patient is probably unaware of.

Without insight into all her radiographs and her history, it is difficult to envisage how she ended up losing the nerves in so many teeth, consequent upon pain in just one tooth initially. Not paying good attention to oral hygiene, as she admits, may have played a part. Extensive use of toothpaste and mouthwashes may have affected the gums adversely. The truth is probably not evident to the patient or any of her carers, and needs further investigation.

Let us await and see how the GDC behaves in this case and drags all concerned including the hospital consultants for an explanation. If it does not, then the GDC needs to be abolished for the essential protection of patients.
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