The patient welfare and economic benefits of routine dental radiography have been thoroughly established.

• Dental radiography in dogs WITHOUT clinical lesions will detect clinically significant information in 27.8% of cases. (1)

• Dental radiography in cats WITHOUT clinical lesions will detect clinically significant information in 41.7% of cases. (2)

• In dogs and cats WITH clinical lesions dental radiography will provide additional information in >50% of cases.

Therefore if dental radiography is performed routinely you will detect more pathology. This can provide significant benefits to patients while increasing practice revenue. Dental radiography can also be a directly chargeable service (although this is not required to justify the outlay). If you are taking full mouth radiographs, it is not unreasonable to charge £50-100. Even if your practice performs infrequent dentistry (1-2 dental procedures per week) you would recover costs within 18 months.

It is becoming less justifiable to offer dentistry without having dental radiography available and knowing how to use it. Most veterinary dental specialists will be vocal that it is unethical to start a general anaesthetic on a cat with suspected tooth resorption, without access to a dental x-ray. If this is the case, informed owner consent should be gained, providing information that dental x-ray is not available at the practice, and that this could have a significant impact on the procedure performed. Similarly, when we see iatrogenic mandible fractures, it is much harder to provide a defence to our colleagues if dental radiography was not performed before the extraction.

Many practices “have dental xray”, but the reality is that either the system available has so many barriers to obtaining a good x-ray that it is not used, and/or staff lack the training to utilise it. To increase revenue a practice needs a system that will actually be used and therefore we need to reduce the barriers that prevent vets and nurses from choosing to take the xrays. This is what Veterinary Dental Solutions was created for. The new size 4 sensor makes taking diagnostic xrays MUCH easier and MUCH faster than any previous system.

Not convinced by our summary? Here are just a few of the many articles making the same argument:

• “Veterinary Dentistry: Good for patients and good for business” - Bob Partridge, https://www.vettimes.co.uk/app/uploads/wp-post-to-pdf-enhanced-cache/1/veterinary-dentistry-good-for-patients-and-good-for-business.pdf

• “Why vets we meet choose DR over CR for their dental radiographs” - Raine Leary, https://www.veterinary-practice.com/article/why-vets-we-meet-choose-dr-over-cr-for-their-dental-radiographs

• “The importance of dental radiology” (2011) - Brook Niemiec, https://todaysveterinarypractice.com/dentistry/the-importance-of-dental-radiology/

• “The importance of dental radiography” (2015) - Brook Niemiec, https://todaysveterinarypractice.com/dentistry/dental-radiography-series-the-importance-of-dental-radiography/

• “The ABCs of veterinary dentistry: X is for intraoral x-rays” - Jan Bellows, https://www.dvm360.com/view/the-abcs-of-veterinary-dentistry-x-is-for-intraoral-x-rays

• “Are Dental Radiographs a Necessary Component of Veterinary Dentistry?” - Catherine Barnette, https://www.dispomed.com/are-dental-radiographs-a-necessary-component-of-veterinary-dentistry/

• “Performing dental procedures in dogs and cats without dental radiographs: Malpractice?” - Graham Thatcher, The Canadian Veterinary Journal, Feb 2020, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6973222/

1. Verstraete FJ, Kass PH, Terpak CH. Diagnostic value of full-mouth radiography in dogs. Am J Vet Res 1998;59(6):686-691.

2. Verstraete FJ, Kass PH, Terpak CH. Diagnostic value of full-mouth radiography in cats. Am J Vet Res 1998;59(6):692-695.