I got asked that yesterday.
Well in one way there isn’t a difference.
For some of us, anyway.
Let me explain.
I’m an orthodontist for example, but I’m also a dentist. In fact, every orthodontist in Ireland is a dentist as well - you can find their names on the Orthodontics division of the Register of Dental Specialists that is held by the Dental Council of Ireland as well as their general register of dentists.
There are about 150 orthodontists in Ireland and we are all dentists.
On the other hand, there are about 4000 dentists in Ireland and most of them – about 3,800 - are not orthodontists.
A dentist conducts dentistry, that area of surgery that deals with the mouth and jaws. There are different areas of dentistry:
- Restorative (fixing teeth)
- Endodontics (treating the insides of teeth, particularly root canals)
- Periodontology (keeping gums healthy)
- Prosthodontics (dealing with artificial teeth for patients who are missing natural teeth)
- Paediatric Dentistry (dealing with children)
- Dental Surgery (treating people by physically intervening on the anatomy of their mouth)
- Orthodontics (no surprises here)
- Dental Radiology (dealing with taking and reading X-Ray pictures of teeth)
- Dental Public Heath (considering measures to maintain the dental health of a population)
- Oral Pathology (the study of the diseases of the mouth)
- Oral Medicine (managing diseases of the mouth that don’t have a surgical solution)
- Oral Microbiology (mouth germs!)
- Special Care Dentistry (dealing with people that might have special medical or psychological needs that require different approaches to regular dentistry)
Like pretty much every dentist, I have done most of these to some degree over the years, and some of them a lot more than others – for instance, I did a lot of dental surgery stuff for years before I went near fixed braces – but orthodontics was the one that interested me to the point that I wanted to do just it, and specifically to train in it, do research into it and eventually pass specialist exams to become an orthodontist.
There’s no law that prevents a dentist from doing orthodontics, but the thing that makes a dentist an orthodontist is the recognition by the Dental Council that they have done an approved orthodontic training and passed the specialty exams, demonstrating that they can do that sort of work to a high standard.
In practice, an orthodontist is someone who almost exclusively does orthodontic treatments, has their practice set up to diagnose and treat the complicated stuff well and use a variety of braces and ideas and their own experience to get the best results for their patients. On top of that, we routinely keep up to date on orthodontic developments; either reinforcing our existing knowledge or learning new stuff.
Any orthodontist would typically take an x-ray picture of a patient’s teeth or detect gum disease or a carious (decayed) tooth, and it would be important to routinely do all these things before starting orthodontic treatment. There’s no reason legally - because an orthodontist is also a dentist – why an orthodontist can’t do more advanced things like take out an impacted wisdom tooth or do a root canal filling or make a set of dentures.
In practice, though, we just wouldn’t be doing enough of these things, or studying them enough after passing the basic dental exams, to be as good at them as we would want to be and so although it’s not against the rules for us to do them, it’s not a good idea to do something you’re not going to be good enough to reliably do well.
Particularly if it doesn’t go well when you do it.
So we send that sort of work to the people who are best at it.
And other dentists send orthodontic work to us.
Including for their own children.