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Dental Drills and Tinnitus
The drill is one of the biggest problems that tinnitus patients face when it comes time to have dental work done. The drill is required for many dental procedures. There is no way to put in a filling or doing a root canal without the drill. The problem is that the drill creates a loud and high-pitched noise, which is not only annoying, but can do serious damage to your hearing.
Wearing ear protection won't help much with the drills. Yes, you can plug your ears all you want, but the fact is that the loud drilling noise does not take its toll through your ear canal; it creates sound and vibrations in your jaw bones which then go all the way up to your ears. Therefore, the damage to your ears is being causedwithin your head, not from the outside.
Wearing earplugs will not help you in this situation. We recommend that you tell your dentist to use short bursts of drilling instead of a prolonged technique. This will minimize the damage caused to your cochlea; it's not perfect, but it is better than the alternative. The drilling does not cause tinnitus but it can make symptoms worse.
Fillings and Tinnitus
There is a connection between tinnitus, and those unsightly fillings that dentists use to remove cavities. We are referring to amalgam fillings which are made from silver and mercury. You might think amalgam fillings are mostly made of silver. In fact, they contain more mercury than silver.
Mercury is the obvious problem. It has been shown to cause neurological problems, mercury poisoning and death. A filling or two is usually not a big deal, but if you have more than that in your mouth, it can be a legitimate cause of your worsening tinnitus symptoms. Multiple mercury fillings have been shown to cause people to absorb more mercury each day than what the World Health Organization considers acceptable.
In other words, these fillings can cause tinnitus or just make existing symptoms worse, which is due to the high level of mercury in your body. We won't get into the science, but we can say that mercury-based fillings may cause tinnitus. Ask for composite resin fillings. We would recommend this regardless of whether you have tinnitus.
Jaw Clenching
The technical term for jaw clenching, bruxism is another thing that can cause tinnitus and make existing symptoms worse. Clenching your jaw can cause serious nerve damage.
Seeing as everything in your head is connected in one way or another, constantly clenching your jaw can affect the nerves in your ears. It is not a serious problem, as the causes of clenching are usually easy to solve. There are also special treatments that can help reduce the severity of your clenching, such as using a mouth guard.
Dentistry and Tinnitus - Other Causes
There are some other dental procedures which can cause or worsen tinnitus symptoms.
* Ultrasonic plaque removal
* Removal of impacted wisdom teeth
* TMJ
* Abscesses of the mouth
Tinnitus and Dentists
Not surprisingly, it is shown that a ridiculously high number of dentists in the word suffer from some kind of hearing loss in conjunction with tinnitus. This is related to the dental drill we just talked about above. High-speed dental drills have been shown to cause or worsen tinnitus symptoms in an overwhelming majority of dentists who use them daily.
A small study found that dental practitioners experience tinnitus twice as often as other medical professionals. A very high percentage of dental professionals, between 30% and 100%, suffer from or will suffer from tinnitus at some point in their career. It is said that having your head next to a gas-powered lawnmower while using a dental drill is the same as working all day.
It is important to note that tinnitus is not only a problem for musicians and heavy machinery operators. Therefore, most dental schools now require students to wear ear protection when working with dental drills.
Conclusion
Dentistry and tinnitus can be a tricky combination. On one hand, dental work can make the problem worse, but on the other hand, dental work is usually a necessary thing.
Over the recent years, the UK dentistry market has seen significant growth, with the market value rising by around 90% between 1999 and 2010. The market is valued at PS5.73 billion per year. In the UK, there 49, 350 dental care professionals and another 32,900 who are working in the general practice sector.
As a dentist, your most valuable assets are your patients. And it's not simply a matter of new dental patients that your practice brings. To successfully start a dental marketing campaign, it is important to know the value of each patient to your practice. The total profit, delivered over time by those patients is what can break or make your dentistry business. If you are to retain a steady and growing number of patients, you must also now what keeps them happy.
Many Irish people now choose to have their cosmetic dental treatment abroad in countries like Turkey, Spain and Portugal. Some of these countries offer their patients discounts of up to 70 percent on what Dublin can offer. Perhaps these countries add more value to their dental patients, underlying the significance of why your practice needs to re-evaluate its marketing strategies.
Value of a new dental patient
The majority of dentistry practices channel a part of their overall marketing budgets to acquiring and locating new patients. The amount of money that should be spent on attracting new patients varies from one dental practice to another. It is a given that marketing dollars spent to attract a new patient should not exceed the lifetime value of that patient to the dental practice.
This makes calculating the value of a new patient a vital component in determining the most prudent way of allocating your marketing budget. However, marketing experts, have a widely ranging estimate when it comes to a new client's long-term value. Some experts have estimated the value at a few hundred dollars while others put it well above $10,000.
A Wealthy dentist survey revealed that only a quarter of the 68 respondents had ever attempted to estimate the value of a brand new dental patient. The respondents estimated the value of new dental patients in the range $200-$3,000. The average per dental patient was between $900 and $1,000.
Determining Patient Lifetime Value
You need to know the lifetime value of each patient in order to build meaningful relationships with them. This way, you can structure and market your practice strategically with the goal of maximizing revenue and taking your business to the next level. The concept of Customer Lifetime Value or CLV is an estimation of the total value of a customer to a business during the entire period you have an engagement.
Customer Lifetime Value is a vital marketing tool for any business. It is especially important for businesses that are relationship driven, like dentistry. Consider the following factors when estimating your clinic's CLV:
* Lifelong Relationship: Total duration that an average patient spends at your dentistry.
* Average Annual Value (Average annual revenue): The amount of revenue generated annually by each patient.
* Client Referral Value : The average number of patients referred by a client.
The following formula can be used to calculate the lifetime value of a patient on average:
Lifetime Patient Value = Lifelong Relationship x Average Annual Value + Client Referral Value
The importance of patient lifetime value calculation
Once you have an estimate of a new dental patient's lifetime value, it becomes possible to make decisions that are more informed in regard to advertising and marketing. You won't want to spend more money on acquiring new dental patients than they will bring to your practice over their lifetime.
You can also set a client target that you need to exceed when you know the current value of each new patient. If you invest $5000 into a patient postcard campaign and you believe the new customer will be worth $500, then you
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