You might be struggling to find a dentist, but self-dentistry is a very bad idea

Many people in the UK are struggling to access adequate dental care to help keep teeth healthy. NHS dentistry is in decline and dental hygiene poverty on the rise. Budget cuts are contributing to “dental deserts” across the country where there’s minimal or no NHS dental health care provision and private care is unaffordable for many.

Lockdowns during the pandemic also prevented many from accessing medical care including NHS dentistry. It’s no surprise, then, that the last few years have led to reports of people resorting to desperate measures to deal with dental woes.

A March 2023 YouGov poll found that one in ten Britons had “performed dentistry on themselves”, including “using cement and superglue to fix crowns and dentures, killing an infection with urine, using "heated polybeads” to replace a missing tooth and applying chemical metal (an adhesive usually used for household or outdoor repairs) as a filling.“

In 2022, academics at the University of Plymouth’s Peninsula Dental School reported that one patient had "used a dart to remove gross deposits of calculus” while another attempted to extract 13 teeth using vodka and pliers.

Most of the tools you see at the dentist are scaled down or refined versions of what you might have in your home toolbox. These pieces of dental hardware are designed to make them more difficult for microbes to inhabit their surfaces and they are sterilised after each use – the pliers used to fix that fitting behind the toilet last month are unlikely to be as sanitary.

Self-extractions can create an oroantral fistula, an abnormal tunnel between the mouth and the maxillary sinus (the hollow space in the bones around the nose). If less than two millimetres it will usually heal on its own. However, larger fistulas are a significant infection risk.

Oral microbes, liquids and food contents may be forced through the open hole into the warm, moist space of the maxillary sinus where infection can manifest and progress – and require invasive surgery.

Also, extracting a tooth may not help if the infection is at the interface between tooth and bone. So, someone getting plucky with the pliers might end up no better off at best and possibly, at worst, in terrible pain and with an open wound at risk of a secondary infection.

DIY dentists also run the risk of leaving part of the tooth remaining in the gum. Root residue often remains because the roots come to a fine point, which often fractures during extraction.

This is yet another infection risk, as the teeth have limited or no blood vessels running through them so immune cells can’t fight bacteria. The average person extracting their own tooth would be unable to determine if part of the root remained, and, if it caused any problems at a later date, may require oral surgery to remove it – which can be costly and incredibly painful.

There is also the risk that self-extractors alter their biting mechanics permanently, making eating painful, and disrupting other healthy teeth in the jaw or damaging the soft tissues of the mouth.

It’s not all white

While most people seem to resort to self-dentistry for pain relief, there are social media users who will go to alarming lengths just to have a movie star smile.

There have been cases of people using nail files to smooth the natural ridges and variations of their teeth. This is extremely dangerous. It removes the hard protective enamel layer from the teeth and causes micro-cracks to open up into the underlying layers which increases the risk of infection, decay and potential for tooth death – all of which will cause future pain and suffering.

Then there’s home tooth-whitening using hydrogen peroxide. Some people have applied hydrogen peroxide solution directly to teeth, risking long-term damage for (possible) short-term gain.

Legal whitening kits are regulated to contain maximum 0.1% hydrogen peroxide, but users expose their teeth to many times higher than that. Hydrogen peroxide is a bleaching agent that damages tissues it comes into contact with. That means it could cause serious injury to gums or the digestive tract, if swallowed.

All these risks show why visiting a dentist should be a priority if you have an oral emergency or you’re determined to undergo cosmetic procedures (and why increasing affordable dental provision should be a priority for the government). Quick fixes and hacks typically end up costing more in the long run.

Adam Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.