Why would a dentist recommend $11K of dental work on an 82 year old?

Well, just because she is elderly and maybe not long for this world does not mean she would not benefit now, and for some time to come from having a healthier mouth. I’d get a second opinion, but, if she is on the verge of having severe dental issues that could cause health issues, infections, this could lead to premature death. Infected teeth are not something to mess around with and can cause all sorts of systemic infections and death.

It’s her money, she should be able to choose how she wishes to spend it. Her quality of life is still viable in the present moment and her dementia does not seem to be that bad if she knows she has money in the bank. lol

He is trying to line his pockets. I would get a second opinion as soon as possible.
There is no reason to put your mom through unnecessary pain.
If her teeth are rotting out and causing her pain, that is another story. A second opinion is really necessary here.

What an ass – he just wants to profit off her.

Money. That is horrid. Never take her to that dentist again. Everytime you remove a filling you need to drill a little more for the new filling and it weakens the teeth. Sometimes fillings do need to be fixed, but the chance of all her fillings being bad are impossible. Get her xrays and records and bring them to her new dentist.

That $ucks. I$ there any way you can talk with the denti$t directly to hear what hi$ rea$oning i$ here? I agree with tho$e above that a $econd opinion i$ required here.

That is unconscionable. Although 82 year olds can live for a long time (my mother died a year ago at well over 96), the dentist cannot possibly justify his claim.

My mother didn’t even bother seeing the dentist after she hit 90, but had the occasional filling and crown work done in her eighties.

You must find another reputable man.

That’s insane! Take her to a realistic dentist who will recommend appropriate work for her age.

Oh, man I know a guy with this same thing. He’s in his late seventies and has given the “ok” to 30K worth of implants. The dentists claimed they had “a meeting” about him and came to the 30K figure. The poor guy was in the hospital for THREE MONTHS and had gotten out a month ago then was told the news. He’s wealthy, doesn’t mind the expenditure but it smells rotten to me. He was very sick, next he gets a large intestinal polyp removed then the dental implants. You will see more and more of this crap as the economy gets weaker. And before I forget, his doctor told him the reason he was in the hospital to being with was HE HAD TWO ROOT CANALS ON THE SAME DAY and an infection settled in his spine. Two weeks later he wound up in the hospital then to a nursing home after that on IV morphine or some painkiller for weeks on end. He’s home now and pulling weeds!

Yep – I agree with everyone else. This so-called dentist sounds like he just wants to make sure he gets her money before she passes. He may even be relying on her dementia to make sure that she wouldn’t even realize he’s trying to scam her.

Please please please get a second opinion!

PS. And make sure to get all the films and ex-rays from the shyster so that your mom does not need new films taken..

Before I decided to have a new crown, my dentist took digital photos with his new adorable mini camera and was able to put them up on the screen (and enlarge) for me to see exactly the damage…silver filling pulling away from side of tooth, surface enamel starting to craze and crack and some brown spots that were the start of decay.

No radiation issues and complete accountability.

If a patient has dementia it is very hard on both the dentist and the patient because they keep forgetting to keep their mouth open and/or they can’t leave it open for so long. The patients’ jaw gets sore, they need to take a nap but they’re strapped to the chair. I could not do this to my mother. I think she passed away with a toothache but it wasn’t bad enough for her to announce to everyone . I just knew.

I would file a complaint about him to the state department that licenses doctors and dentists. Even if they don’t accept your complaint, you can have a conversation with them about it’s appropriateness or inappropriateness. Let them decide.

Oral health is very important. It is correlated with good heart health, although they don’t seem to know why. It might have something to do with the way bacteria enter the blood stream through the gums and end up attacking the heart, but that is just one thing my dentist mentioned.

If you’re 82, you could be young still. You might have fifteen more years left. Being unable to eat is a really big degradation of life and activities of daily living. It just plain sucks. So if that is what your mother is facing, then dental care may well be what she needs more than anything else.

And people are living longer with dimentia now than ever before. Still, you have to ask yourself about their quality of life if they have dimentia. And it’s worse if they have degraded mental faculties and very bad teeth.

We have a habit of saying nothing is too good for our parents. We feel guilty if we don’t spend every penny to try to make their lives as comfortable as possible. But are we doing them any favors? Some huge amount of money is spent on health care in the last days of a person’s life—like a quarter or even a half of all the money spend in the entire life.

I think it is easy to encourage people to resist this, but it is hard to resist because then you think you aren’t doing right by your parents. Will this spending improve your mother’s life? By how much? How much worse off will it be for sitting in the dentist’s chair? How much time and pain will it cause? It’s a very tough decision to make.

I’m going in for the second half of a root canal tomorrow. My tooth feels so much better. It was a pain getting the nerve drilled out, but it seems like it will be worth it. It’s been over a year since I could bite down on that tooth.

I’m going against everyone else. I’m thinking it’s money well spent if it really improves her oral health. Maybe you could spread it out. Maybe you could buy insurance to help pay for it. But if she lives another ten or fifteen years and her teeth haven’t been fixed, then it seems to me you could be feeling pretty guilty about that. It’s just hard to know what the future will bring.

I agree completely with @Coloma.

While the guy may have the ethics of a snake, it’s not at all proven, and I would hate to rush to judgment on anyone on the basis of her recounting of an appointment with him (when you weren’t in the room to hear what transpired).

On the other hand, I would certainly get a second opinion and not take this prognosis as gospel.

Hell, I wouldn’t pay $11,000 for my own dental work now when I’m not even halfway to 82.

Aside from the mild dementia, is your mom is good physical health for her age? Many women live into the 90’s these days and still like to keep up their appearance and health otherwise so why not teeth? Did the dentist know her exact age? Is he aware she has dementia? In my experiences, even if you see the same dentist or doctor regularly, they don’t know your age or other health conditions unless it’s brought to their attention.

I gotta think the dementia makes it tough to decide.

With my wife’s grandparents – who also lived well into their nineties and were also subject to slight bouts of dementia – we worked hard to help them maintain their independence as long as possible.

That meant that we helped them spend their money the way they wanted it spent. And for us, we would sit down with them frequently to discuss in detail what a large purchase would require of them, what consequences they should consider, etc. We tried hard to be impartial, but they’d often ask us our opinion of what we think they should do.

Oft times, they’d forget whatever the decision was and we’d have to repeat the process. Sometimes they’d just make a unilateral decision and that’d be it.

All in all, our situation worked out pretty okay. There was no inheritance left over, but my wife’s grandparents were generally content and we were fortunate to have partnered with them on how they navigated life.

Speaking of root canals. My dentist billed $1400. The insurer paid $800. The endodontist accepts that as payment in full. I would offer $6000 to the dentist to do all that work, should you decide to go ahead with it. That’s an awful lot of work. Dentist probably has a kid entering college. Also, times being what they are, people don’t have money for dental care. That’s why my dentist is accepting insurance payment as payment in full. My regular dentist is now in my plan, and he had been independent for the last 20 years. Times are a-changing. Do not pay full price!

That’s um… that’s beyond unpardonable. Shame on him. I hope you take her to get a second opinion.

@wundayatta, as near as I can tell, my insurance (health, dental, vision) has always paid far less on everything than the “going rate”.

They chalk it up to being “in network”... essentially saying that the insurance company is able to negotiate a lower rate because they offer business to the doctor in bulk… like shopping as Costco.

Of course, the doctors aren’t going to do the job without making a profit, no matter who’s paying (well, except for Uncle Sam). So I’m confident they’re able to pay their bills and vacation in Rio just fine on insurance customers alone.

In my opinion then, the “going rate” is there to give them a starting point to negotiate down from. Analogous to saying, “I offer to sell you this Snickers bar for $3” but then accepting your offer of only $2 where it only had cost me 35¢ in the first place. It’s all just a game and everyone knows how it works.

Point is, I second your suggestion that if they decide the dental work is necessary, then offering to pay a discounted price is definitely a smart move.

He is obviously after her money, and he is probably related to either Cartman from southpark or Adolf Hilter.

However, I hear that healthy teeth help prevent heart attacks. Yea she is 82, but my aunt Maud made it to 101, she very well could have another 20 years in her, and as a 20 something year old, that seems a lot to me.

For $11K I’d pull out all of my teeth on my own. I would never return to that dentist.

I agree with @jca. I’d file a complaint today.

She suffers from some dementia and insisted that I take her to the bank to withdraw $11k from her money market account to immediately pay for his estimate of what he wants to do

I have never heard of ^^^such unscrupulous antics before.
Seriously, document all of this @majorrich.

Has this dentist ever heard of these?

Her dementia has reached the point that sometimes it isn’t safe to let her cook or leave the house on her own. She has used soap and all kinds of other stuff in her cooking, Can not be trusted to turn off the burners on the gas stove. Then there are the financial things. I moved her in with us when my father became very ill from Parkinsons. After he passed away 6 years ago, I have paid her bills and taken care of the house and stuff. Unfortunately, she is in pretty good physical condition, her mind is just going away. My wife and I are in one of the ‘kids rooms’ She has the master bedroom, and has set the room Dad was in as kind of a shrine and gets all upset when we go in there. So…. I am a 52 year old man who still lives with his mother.

Are you her legal guardian? If so, no contractual activity can be done or is valid without your permission. If you are not, you should consider applying for it.

What he’s proposing seems excessive but the only way to know for sure is to get at least one or more second opinions from a reputable source. The consultation fee(s) for that would be money spent wisely.

And then if it turns out he is being a shyster and you decide to file a complaint at least you have some authoritative backup.

But ALL her fillings sounds way over the top.

I am with @wundayatta . Oral health is important, and it may extend her life, and her quality of life.
If she is suffering from dementia, that may be questionable, but I like to think people like that dentist are thinking about others, and not themselves.
Get a second opinion, though.

They way I see it, at 82 most people are dentally home free. If they were going to have 11k worth of trouble, they would have known it by now. Unless your mom has infections that are dripping pus and causing pain, I would say stick to maintainance. Imagine a trainer at the local gym telling your mom she should do P90X.

I’m half her age and if a dentist told me he wanted to spend 11k drilling out my fillings and replacing them, I’d tell him to go fuck himself. Now at her age, forget about it!

If she has any discomfort certainly measures should be taken to fix what causes her pain. Otherwise, if she is not complaining, well you have my answer above.

My girlfriend just had all her teeth pulled and implants put in. Something like $30k. They are uncomfortable still, she is about 6 months out, and she wonders if she should have just done the dentures. She knew something had to be done without the dentist telling her. She is in her early 60’s. My aunt has a troubled mouth, but her denists goes at a reasonable pace fixing what is necessary. She had stopped seeing her dentist when she went on medicaid to go to a teaching hospital that accepts medicaid and it was horrific. The students were very pleasant, and I assume competent, but the protocols they have are ridiculous. I went and spoke with the student dentist and the person over him, and then I went and spoke to her former dentist, and decided we should pay.

My own dentist has told me stories of new patients who had been told they needed fillings replaced and come to him for a second opinions and a lot of the time it is total bullshit. Once in a while it is warranted. But, the whole mouth?

@JLeslie Exactly “any discomfort”. What’s missing from the story is whether or not she is actually having any trouble with her teeth. If so, then as @wundayatta and others point out it’s money well spent because ailing teeth can cause other very serious problems.

But replacing all the fillings, that sounds suspiciously like a make-work project for the dentist.

Bottom line, get a second and third and fourth opinion before you completely paint this guy black. It does seem excessive but, until you do the follow up opinions you have no reference point.

Give us an update when you decide what you end up doing.

Get a second opinion, sounds like one hell of an upsell to me. Go somewhere else.

Free market, baby.

I would also ask the dentist himself to clarify things for you. It’s not uncommon for adult children to speak with their parents’ doctors about medical issues.