A 2020 Cochrane review that assessed the two clinical trials concluded that "whether adults see their dentist for a check‐up every six months or at personalized intervals based on their dentist's assessment of their risk of dental disease does not affect tooth decay, gum disease, or quality of life. Longer intervals (up to 24 months) between check‐ups may not negatively affect these outcomes." The Cochrane reviewers reported that they were "confident" of little to no difference between six-month and risk-based check-ups and were "moderately confident" that going up to 24-month checkups would make little to no difference either.
Likewise, Nadanovsky and his colleagues highlight that there is no evidence supporting the benefit of common scaling and polishing treatments for adults without periodontitis. And for children, cavities in baby teeth are routinely filled, despite evidence from a randomized controlled trial that rates of pain and infections are similar—about 40 percent—whether the cavities are filled or not.
Further evidence that the privatization of healthcare is incentivized to produce worse outcomes and waste.
This article of a dentist testing other dentists gives some more anecdotal evidence: https://www.rd.com/article/how-honest-are-dentists/
Great article, and shocking to see the prices mentioned and this at the end: This article originally ran in the February 1997 issue of Reader’s Digest.
But then it also says after that Originally Published: November 18, 2020 Who knows?