Giang Chu DMD

If I could give Dr Chu more stars I would. This lady is really in the dental business to help people, unlike other dentists who want to steer you into the most expensive treatments. If you don’t have insurance she is the dentist for you. Let me tell my story:
I am 68 years old and in pretty good health. I bike 3200 miles a year so I am pretty fit. However my teeth are not in the best of shape. I have three implants/​crowns and about 20 other crowns. I did all this restoration mostly when I had dental insurance so the quality of the dentist was important since crowns were covered half price and most other procedures had decent coverage. Now I am in a stage of my life as an IBM retiree where I no longer have dental insurance. My latest story begins with tooth 6, the right incisor. It had a crown on it, but recently (every 6 months), the crown would fall off. My current dentist in Morgan Hill refused to try anything creative and told me I needed an implant. Okay so I know the process since I have been through it 3 times already. (Start with the Oral Surgeon to get the tooth pulled, put in some bone graft, wait 6 months, screw the threaded part of the implant into your jaw, and then pass you off to the regular dentist to finish up with the crown placement). Both the oral surgeon and my regular dentists are excellent dentists. They are both highly trained and skilled. However they both have large staffs, big offices, and yes a high overhead to run their business. I went to the Oral surgeon in Morgan Hill and he gave me this estimate for tooth 6:
Oral Evaluation… 92
Surgical extraction #6 … 324
Bone Replacement graft…1200
Cone CT Xray… 475
Surgical placement of Imp. 2657
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Total 4748
The regular dentist was charging 2766 or the crown placement and 475 for an appliacance know as a stay plate so I could wear this cosmetic device while the implant was healing. Total would be for one tooth: 7989 or about 8000 dollars for one tooth. I couldn’t believe this price and I’m sure it has gone up since my last implant but I did not want to pay this amount. I did call an oral surgeon in Hollister
who would do all the procedures (without the Xray) for 2208. Quite a difference in price wouldn’t you say?. To be fair both these oral surgeons did implants on me. The Hollister guy did 2 of my implants and the local Morgan Hill guy did one. I would have to say that going through the same experience with both of them the local Morgan Hill surgeon was more skilled. However the price difference was way more disparate than the skill difference so I was ready to have the Hollister guy do the work. Anyway my old crown on number 6 was in a little plastic baggy instead of my mouth. I was unable to keep using Dentemp to successfully keep it on for more than a few hours. The underlaying tooth was basically broke off at the gum line so I really thought I was screwed.
So here I am staring at an 8000 dollar dental bill, my dentist refuses to try a fix, and I have a hole in my front teeth real obvious when I smile. I got desperate and starting searching for a dentist who could «think out of the box». I started going door to door at the Hale Avenue Dental Complex in Morgan Hill. I finally on Friday got to Dr. Chu’s office and scheduled an appointment .I wanted to know if she could put my crown back on temporarily. When I got there on Saturday she did something my regulary dentist could not do or didn’t want to do. She built me a complete temporary tooth. And it only took one hour !. This tooth looked so good I couldn’t believe it. It’s not quite as smooth as a real crown but for the price it looks excellent. You can’t tell the difference cosmetically between a real crown and this temporary crown. O yes and did I forget to mention the price. 100 Dollars!!. There are some caveats that Dr Chu explained. I have to be careful and not to bite things like apples on that tooth. It is not as strong as an implant based tooth. Hey. but what the heck, 8000 vs 100. Let’s see that’s 80 times I can get it repaired. If it lasts for 1 year which if may, I’ve made out !! Anyway that’s my story and one of the conclusions that you may draw from this story is this: Why don’t dentists offer people without insurance this low cost option? Sometimes a cheap temporary crown can become more permanent and save the customer big money.