Northwoods Dental Clinic

As a health care facility we have confidentiality requirements. We are unable to confirm or deny any reviewer is a current or past patient, or respond in any detail to a review that could suggest so. Keep this in mind when reading patient reviews, for any medical practice, there is usually more to the story. Any current or potential patients with questions or concerns are encouraged to contact our office directly at (218) 732-1414. We can, however, provide general information about Northwoods Dental and our treatment philosophy. I do care about my patients and try to make time to see patients quickly when they call with acute concerns. These same day appointments are often put in the schedule at the same time as other previously scheduled patients – in order to respect the patient with the scheduled appointment I do not usually have as much time to spend with the emergency appointment beyond evaluating their concern, so your emergency appointment may feel shorter than a regular treatment appointment. For most patients this is an acceptable trade-off in order to be seen quickly.Radiation use in dentistry is monitored by the Minnesota Department of Health; they state that dental x-rays are only to be obtained when clinically indicated. Whether an x-ray is indicated depends on the findings of a clinical exam and what other imaging the patient has had recently. For example, if a patient has had a full set of x-rays within the last year, it may not be indicated to repeat the exposure. It is also important to note that dental x-rays show hard structure like bone and teeth – soft tissue structures such as cheeks, lips, and salivary glands are not visualized.Published studies estimate the prevalence of jaw locking at 3% of the female adult population – this is equal to 5 million women in the United States. There are estimated to be 17,730 cases of head and neck cancer diagnosed in the United States in women in 2023. If every case of head and neck cancer manifested with jaw locking that would mean 0.3% of adult women with jaw locking would have oral cancer, not 50%. In actuality, jaw locking is NOT one of the most common presentations of oral cancer so it would be much lower than 0.3%.We always appreciate feedback and wish you the best.