Prosthodontics

[NYCPROS]

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Hi, I am a 3rd year dental student at Howard University. I will be applying the prosthodontics programs in NYC(mainly NYU and Columbia). I have done research both on this forum and in the journals and can not seem to find the answer. I have read all the posts and I am not in this field for the money.

My question is will there still be demand for the dentures in the future? I have read the studies that the demand for the complete dentures have been sharply declined. On the other hand, you still have aging populations. Also, there should still be demands for partials and implants.

I know pros is not a good field in terms of the time and money invested. I don't mind taking less money. The only concers I have is whether there will still be a need? I don't want to be forced to go back to be a GP.

 

[pietrodds]

you make it sound like pros doesn't do GP... you better look hard at pros because it basically is GP only you do it on a smaller population and charge more because you're doing bigger GP tx plans.

 

[mike3kgt]

Hi, I am a 3rd year dental student at Howard University. I will be applying the prosthodontics programs in NYC(mainly NYU and Columbia). I have done research both on this forum and in the journals and can not seem to find the answer. I have read all the posts and I am not in this field for the money.

My question is will there still be demand for the dentures in the future? I have read the studies that the demand for the complete dentures have been sharply declined. On the other hand, you still have aging populations. Also, there should still be demands for partials and implants.

I know pros is not a good field in terms of the time and money invested. I don't mind taking less money. The only concers I have is whether there will still be a need? I don't want to be forced to go back to be a GP.

Read:
http://jada.ada.org/cgi/reprint/136/8/1154.pdf

There will always be a demand for prosthodontists because as more general dentists keep doing more complex cases without proper training (CE, formal education, etc), there will be more work for the pros guys to fix up what went wrong.

There will always be difficult patients that will get referred. We live in a referral medical system now, as people go to the dentist, they #1 believe their 'insurance' covers everything and #2 they get referred to a specialist for 'special' reasons. Many people get referred to a "specialist" have no problem justifying paying more because they are now being treated as a "specialist" as opposed to a "generalist" regardless who they are.

I am sure this will bring on flames but trust me, I've seen it MANY times over and over again during the 2 years I worked in a prostho office.

 

[NYCPROS]

thank you mike3kgt. That is a great article.

However, with the residency and about 3-5 years to establish a solid practice. That is about ten years. My question is will there still be denture patients twenty years from now.(partial and implant retained) In other words, after ten years of private practice, I may see a decrease of patients. Do you see that as a potential problem???

 

[EggShaped]

The way I see it is that in 10 years, you'll be re-treating the implant cases that were not done properly. It's going to be the cases that are being done presently by GP (because we all know how the use of implants kind of "exploded" over the past years). You're also going to be doing the more complex cases as well, like Mike mentioned.

Also, I think dentures are here to stay. You'll probably see a decrease in complete dentures but my bet is that you will see an increase in partial dentures (removable, fixed or implant-retained). People will continue to lose their teeth due to pathological reasons other than cavities.

If you find that the demand for your services are not high enough, you don't HAVE to go back to GP. You can always go into academics and stay in your field (if money is not your prime concern)

I think there was an article on this forum about "The future of prosthodontics" or something like that. Look into it!