If you’ve had your teeth straightened in the past 20 years, the procedure was likely performed by an orthodontist, but new technology could change who performs these procedures in the future.
Carrie Shaw, Director of Marketing at OutRank by Rogers, has been watching this change in dental care. “We help hundreds of dentists and orthodontists connect with patients through Google AdWords real-time bidding. Our team processes over 5 million patient searches related to dental procedures, which shows how the industry is changing. To date, we’ve seen about 34% of our dental partners optimize their ads for search terms like Invisalign, Clear Braces, Aligners, and Smile Correction.”
A lot of this change is due to the ease with which these procedures can be incorporated into dental offices. With systems like Invisalign, dentists can assess alignment issues and create models of the patient’s teeth, which are already common in dental offices. These models are then sent to a lab where 10 to 20 sets of retainers are made. Without the need for additional tools or staff, these systems offer dentists a low-barrier way to expand into new business.
Dr. Sundeep J. Patel is a dentist who handles a high volume of smile correction requests. He has seen an increase in acceptance of cosmetic dentistry among both patients and doctors. “When I first started practicing 15 years ago, only about one in 10 adults came to my office for cosmetic dental treatment. Today, we live in an age of cosmetics, with about 6 in 10 new patients coming in for cosmetic treatments. A significant portion of these include some form of orthodontic treatment.”
Dr. Patel continues to refer patients to orthodontists at his Winnipeg practice, but explains, “It’s entirely up to the dentist to decide whether to refer a patient. I see more and more dentists doing general orthodontic work every day, and I sincerely think this trend will continue, especially among younger dentists who are saturating the market.”
What’s good for dentists, however, can be worrisome for orthodontists. Dr. Bruce McFarlane, orthodontist and mentor at ICANDO, explains, “There is one orthodontist for every 10 dentists. Oral health professionals will naturally expand their services to accommodate the increased competition, but this does not mean the end of orthodontics as we know it today.”
In many cases, traditional orthodontic treatment is essential to ensure that patients receive the desired correction. For example, skeletal issues, overbites, and narrow bite contours are common issues that cannot be addressed with products such as Invisalign. At Dr. McFarlane’s office, adult corrections account for about 30% of his total cases, and only about a third of those cases are suitable for braces. “My concern is not about competition, but whether patients are willing to listen to their doctors’ advice and not be obsessed with a single treatment plan,” Dr. McFarlane explains.
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