What a dental check-up should include, and how often you need one

What a proper check-up should include

A check-up is not a glance at the tooth that hurts followed by a treatment plan. It should cover every tooth you have, one at a time, not only the sore one. It should cover the gums, including how deep the pockets are around the teeth that bleed. It should cover the way your teeth meet when you bite, because a bite that is off wears enamel and cracks fillings. It should cover the work already in your mouth, since fillings and crowns do not last forever and the decay that starts underneath an old one is invisible until it is large.

It should also include a look at the soft tissue of the cheeks, tongue and palate. That takes under a minute and it is the part nobody thinks about.

X-rays only when there is a reason

Decay between two teeth and infection at the tip of a root are both invisible to the naked eye, so an x-ray is sometimes the only way to answer the question. That is different from x-raying everybody as a matter of routine. There should be a reason you can follow, and you should be told what the x-ray costs before it is taken rather than finding it on the bill afterwards.

Then the part that matters most. You should be told in plain language what was found, what needs doing now, what can be watched, and what each item costs before you agree to anything. If you leave a dental check-up without knowing the total, you have not had a check-up. You have had a sales appointment.

How often you genuinely need one

Every six months is a sensible default rather than a rule for everybody.

Twice a year

Come every six months if you have a history of gum disease, if scale builds quickly on your lower front teeth, if you smoke, if you are diabetic, if you already have several fillings or crowns, or if you drink karak and tea through the day. Sugar and tannin in three or four cups a day change the picture.

Once a year

Once a year is reasonable if you have had no new decay for several years, your gums do not bleed, and you clean between your teeth properly.

Sooner, whatever the calendar says

Come sooner if your gums bleed when you brush, if cold or sweet sensitivity lasts more than a few seconds, if a tooth is sore to bite on, if a filling or a piece of tooth has chipped away, or if there is a bad taste coming from one spot.

The arithmetic of leaving it

No figures are needed to follow this, only the order of the steps.

Decay found early is a small repair. A cavity that has not reached the nerve is cleaned out and filled in one visit, and one of our fillings costs a fraction of anything further down this list. The tooth is then finished with.

Leave the same cavity and it does not heal and it does not stop. It reaches the nerve, the tooth starts waking you at night, and the treatment is no longer a filling. It is root canal treatment, which costs several times what the filling would have, and a root treated back tooth usually needs one of our crowns afterwards to stop it splitting. Two treatments instead of one, and both of them larger.

Leave it longer and the tooth may not be savable at all. An extraction is not expensive in itself. What follows it is. Replacing a missing tooth, whether with a bridge, a denture or an implant, costs far more than saving the original ever would have, and no replacement works as well as the tooth you were born with. Al Najma does not place implants, so that is not us selling you the next stage. It is simply what a gap eventually costs anywhere in the country.

Nothing about this is dramatic. It is the ordinary path of one small cavity that nobody looked at, and every step of it costs more than the step before.

The free check-up that is not free

You will see clinics in Sharjah advertising a free consultation, or a check-up for almost nothing, or a package that sounds too good to argue with. Some are decent clinics using an offer to bring people through the door. Others are not, and the pattern is recognisable.

The warning signs are these. A treatment plan covering eight or ten teeth at the first visit with no order of priority. Urgency without an explanation you can follow. Sound old fillings recommended for replacement because they are old. Whitening or veneers suggested when you came in about pain. A total that never quite gets written down.

When the examination itself is priced at nothing, it has to be paid for out of whatever gets recommended afterwards. The price of the check-up tells you nothing about the price of the work, and that is the whole point of the offer. What matters far more is whether you are told the cost before treatment starts and whether that number holds. How we handle that is set out on our pricing page.

Three questions to ask any clinic

What is the total? Not the cost of one filling. The total for everything being recommended, in dirhams. A clinic that treats this as an awkward question has answered it.

What happens if I leave it? A straight answer sorts the plan into what is urgent, what can wait six months, and what is optional. Some items genuinely are optional. If everything on the list is described as urgent, ask again, and ask what the x-ray shows.

Can I have it in writing? A written plan with the price beside each item is normal and reasonable to ask for. It lets you go home, think, and compare. It also makes it very hard for the figure to change later.

One practical note for Sharjah. We take cash and card, and we do not bill insurers directly. You get a stamped invoice and a completed reimbursement form so you can claim from your insurer yourself, which means the number you were quoted is the number on the paper.

If it has been a while, a check-up is usually the most useful appointment you can make. You will leave knowing what is going on in your mouth and what it would cost to deal with, even if the answer is that nothing needs doing yet.

Common questions