CHEAP, GREEDY AND CARELESS = BAD DENTIST
I am in complete agreement with the other patient who gave Dr. Tran only a one star rating.
I went to Oak Dental because I was looking for a dentist who is closer to my home than my former dentist and who also had good YELP ratings. BIG MISTAKE!! I suspect the good reviews and high ratings for Dr. Tran were probably written by either family members or friends.
For decades I had two teeth with large fillings that had never given me any trouble. Dr. Tran told me that they both needed crowns. This raised red flags for me but because of time pressure with other events in my life I permitted Dr. Tran to begin work on these teeth.
FIrst off, after he gave me one shot of novocaine he didn't check to see if the tooth was numb. He simply had me open my mouth and immediately began grinding away on the tooth. The tooth wasn't numb, the drilling hurt like hell and I had to make him stop and administer more novacaine. This why I believe that Dr. Tran is both careless and cheap. He tried to perform the procedure by giving me as little novocaine as he thought he could get away with (everything, including novocaine, has a business expense) and I think he was hoping to cut expenses by giving me as little novocaine as he thought he could get away with. And I have never before experienced a dentist who didn't first confirm that the novocaine had, in fact, numbed the area. Also, the crown was very rough along the base, he was ready to release me and I had to have him stop and smooth the roughness from the base. It still wasn't done as smoothly as other dentists had done with other crowns I received but he clearly was in a hurry to move on.
Second, these teeth did not need crowns. Like I said, they had had large fillings in them for decades and my prior dentist (who is an excellent dentist ) kept an eye on them but always wanted to preserve as much of the original tooth structure as possible. I believe Dr. Tran viewed the large fillings as an opportunity to perform a couple of unnecessary $1,000 procedures, but that if he was scrutinized he could argue were valid dental procedures (as preventive dentistry to avert the teeth from cracking). I got by for decades without needing crowns on these teeth. This is why I believe Dr. Tran is greedy. He removed a lot of perfectly healthy tooth structure to install an unneeded crown. This was the last time that I was going to allow Dr. Tran to work on me.
The day after Dr. Tran installed the crown I started experiencing pain in the gum around the tooth he worked on. After a month I went back to my prior dentist about the pain and he sent me to an endodontist. The endodontist determined that there was damage to the root of the tooth that Dr. Tran had worked on and confirmed that it was possible that Dr. Tran had traumatized the tooth - so now I need a undergo a root canal procedure.
The tooth cleaning performed by Dr. Tran and his assistant was the most minimal I have ever experienced. They did no evaluation whatsoever about the condition of my gums and only scraped the tartar from a few lower teeth. I believe the fact that I was the last appointment of the day caused them to rush through and do as little as they could possibly get away with so that they could get out of the office. As far as I'm concerned, just more evidence of a lack of caring on the part of Dr. Tran.
Finally, a word about his dental assistant. She was not a pleasant person to be around but I suspect she is overworked and underpaid (she is Dr. Tran's only assistant). She also was careless. While applying fluoride to my teeth her hair dangled against my face. Creepy and unsanitary.
The receptionist is Dr. Tran's wife. While she is a pleasant person who does what she can to cover the deficiencies of Dr. Tran, it is nowhere nearly enough.
If you still think you want to give Dr. Tran a try, print out and bring this review with you and hand it to Dr. Tran to read, before you let him work on you. It may at least give him pause about how poorly he conducts his business. read more