Long review, but it was a long bad experience. It started when calling for an appointment in mid…read moreSeptember, but the worst was to come. I added this office as my primary care physician on Sept 19th, and they told me that I won't be on their list in September or October, so I had to wait a month and a half on November 1st to see the dentist. (For my new dentist in Edison, I added them on Nov 7th, and I was on their list the next day on Nov 8th, so was able to get an appointment right away). This dentist office made me wait a month and half.
2 Days before my appointment, I got a call to confirm, and I said Yes. An hour before, I got another call to confirm and I said yes I'm on my way and will be there early. 5 mins later I got a call again. I told her she just called me about the same thing 5 mins ago. They keep calling you about the same appointment.
After I got there and was brought inside, I got the usual x-rays. Then an assistant said to open my mouth and start poking my gums with a sharp instrument, calling out numbers to another assistant. Apparently, its for measurements of the gap of the gum between teeth. She didn't bother tell me what she was doing, I had to ask her later. I never had any dentist do that to me without rubbing my gums with an ointment first to make it numb and less painful. The poking was painful, and I let out several "owww" as I was in pain. More pain is yet to come.
When the dentist came in, she asked what my biggest concern is. I told her that I have food stuck between the upper back teeth, and have to floss after every meal or it gets stuck, would rot, and stuck. She told me that can be fixed with crowns. I didn't do much research and didn't know what are crowns. The dentist didn't bother explaining to me the procedure, just told me I need them. I thought they were just an extra layer of crown put on top of your current teeth.
Later when I got home, I looked up crowns, and it is shaving the whole top of the tooth off except leaving a peg sticking up so that you can fit a crown on top of it. WTF, my back 2 teeth are perfectly fine, I just have a gap where food gets stuck. I don't want to destroy and shave off the whole tooth of 4 perfectly healthy teeth. Online, I read that the gaps can be fixed with fillings without any destruction of the tooth or inlay/outlays where they only shave off part of the tooth and fill in the rest. If she had told me the procedure of crowns, I would have told her no. Obviously they only care about charging an overpriced $8,000 on 4 crowns, and said I would have to pay $2,900 from my own pocket. Of course they didn't tell me the price until I was ready to leave the office and made me sign the estimate. I told them what about the cheaper options of doing fillings or inlays instead of crowns, and she said this is just to sign for next appointments, and we can discuss it at the next appointment.
The last thing she did before I left the office was the deep cleaning. Cleaning need to be done before any other procedures. They only had time to do my left half of my mouth before they close. The assistant rubbed an ointment on my gums to make it semi-dumb. (she should have done that earlier when she was poking my gums to take measurements, which was painful). Before she allowed my gums to be numb, she started sticking needles into my gums (even more painful than before) to make it even more numb. She should have waited longer before sticking the painful needles into my gums. She then took an sharp instrument and started deep cleaning (sticking it into my gums in front of my teeth and between the teeth). I let out anguished howls because I was in so much pain. She stopped and stuck more needles to try to make it even more numb. Again I let out "Oww" in pain. She saw how much pain i'm experiencing so she stopped that area and worked elsewhere. I have had many deep cleaning before, and this was by the the most painful I have ever experienced.
I made an appointment to come back to do deep cleaning on the right side half. When I got home, I examined my left side teeth which I just got a cleaning on. My left side looked exactly like my right side, except for the bleeding gums from the deep cleaning. My teeth didn't look like it was even cleaned. I had some black residue build up on the teeth on both sides, and some yellow tarter build up. The dentist assistant didn't even use any of the spinning polish instrument that I normally have dentists use in cleanings.
Not only was this BY FAR the most painful dentist experience of my life, but the "deep cleaning" didn't even clean any teeth. It looks like only the gum areas were cleaned from the bleeding I see in my gums. I called them and told them I was dissatisfied of the cleaning and cancelled the next appointment. I won't be coming back for them to do anything else to my teeth. I'm going to see a different dentist.