Many years ago, while my wife made a temporary return to her hometown in Japan from overseas, she paid a visit to a local dentist for an ordinary check-up. The dentist there convinced her to extend the height of some molar teeth, suggesting that this might help to avoid possible occurrence of “very serious” temporomandibular joint disease in the unknown future. Although there was no symptom at that time, but in a country like Japan, no one would throw doubt on the opinion and integrity of a professional person, such as a dentist. With much persuasion by the local dentist, my wife, as a result, had all her small and molars (8 teeth) of the upper jaw lengthened by 1 mm with dental fillings.
From that time onwards, her occlusion was seriously tampered. Soon after my wife was back to her overseas home, she started to experience various malocclusion symptoms: persistent teeth pains, biting difficulties and muscle tensions. The malocclusion and biting pressure then caused many of her teeth to crack one after the other over the years. None of the dentists that she subsequently visited could remedy her malocclusion because such kind of dentist-created malocclusion was never heard of in overseas. Eventually, she had decided to return to Japan to seek help.
In the summer of 2018, my wife found a dentist X with good skills and experience in treating malocclusion. Since then dentist X had been able to improve her occlusion and significantly reduce her teeth pain by meticulous micro-adjustments to resin crowns that he has put on. These resin crowns were very properly crafted and durable, but they were meant to be an intermediate step to find the optimal biting, before replacing them with permanent ceramic crowns. The only issue was that no one had an idea as to when the occlusion treatment could come to an end. In Jan 2021, her upper left #2 tooth (UL2) which was previously damaged by malocclusion eventually fell off. She would want to replace it with a dental implant, but dentist X opined that she should go for a bridge. At that time, which was more than 2 and a half years’ occlusion treatment with dentist X, 70 – 80% of the pain symptoms had gone, and biting difficulties minimized, my wife’s life was more or less back to normal.
With a strong desire for a tangible timetable for the completion of occlusion treatment, and the preference for implant to bridge, my wife started out looking for 2nd opinion in early 2021.
Attracted by various brilliant claims as described on the website of Fukuoka dentist Masato Ikeda (http://www.art-smile.com/), my wife paid a visit to his dental clinic. That’s when my wife’s nightmare began.