Most people don’t usually seek out a second opinion after visiting their doctor unless the diagnosis is serious. Then again, you could go to your dentist after breaking a tooth to be told that you need a crown as well as a root canal even though you are not in pain. This is why a second opinion may be important to your health but money as well.
To illustrate, I will give you one example. Your dental insurance may cover part or the entire root canal so you trust that your dentist is doing the right thing for you. Of course, you also may have zero dental insurance that prompts you to postpone the procedure until visiting another dentist and getting a second opinion. Unless you have an infection or pain, you might not need a root canal and could have just gone ahead with getting a crown. The root canal could always come after the crown is put in. Trust me, but I learned this the hard way and nearly went through one year of healing from a botched root canal that damaged ligaments when I never needed one in the first place. The reason that I never got a second opinion was because of cost and lack of dental insurance, which cost me the worst pain of my life and $4,000 just trying to heal.
Here are some valid reasons why you owe it to yourself to get a second opinion. What if your doctor or dentist only gave you one treatment option of what to do about your health or dental problem? A second opinion gives you a different set of eyes and knowledge that could possibly lead you to alternative treatments after evaluating your condition and comparing results of your tests, X-rays, etc.
A second opinion can also help give you a more trustworthy diagnosis. After all, a matching conclusion from two professionals about your condition and suggested treatment is more thorough from their findings than just one.
Needless to say, a second opinion could also dismiss the original diagnosis. Maybe you don’t have something like TMJ (temporomandibular joint dysfunction) when a dentist told you that this is the cause of your pain. Instead in this case, you just might have run into an incompetent dentist that gave you too high of a filling. Yes, this is another dental nightmare that also happened to me. Fortunately, my second opinion helped me when needing relief instead of a costly appliance.
I had my share of dental nightmares before I found my last dentist, who understood all that I went through. He was compassionate as well as competent. In addition, he never pushed procedures just to line his pockets. However, he just retired and once again I am back to square one. One thing for sure, I will not ever give a dentist a free reign in my mouth for something serious or go through another root canal (I will pull a tooth first) before getting a second opinion.
