AI and case acceptance: Building bridges between you and your patients

When you and your patient don’t see the same problem, AI can help close the gap

Does transparency lead to trust? It depends. If, as a dentist, you are transparent about your frustration when you provide an expert diagnosis and your patient denies treatment, maybe not. However, if you can increase the transparency between what you see and what the patient understands in your treatment plan presentation, the answer is more likely to be “yes.”

By making diagnostic findings clearer to patients, artificial intelligence (AI) is helping dentists pull back the curtain between case presentation and case acceptance.

Key Takeaways

Most patients don’t understand diagnostic findings on dental radiographs, making them skeptical about treatment plans.
AI can use color to enhance radiographic findings and provide more clarity about what they mean, while the patient is still in the chair.
The accuracy of AI in identifying pathology in radiographs has been proven in several studies, so both dental professionals and patients can be confident in its results.

When a dental x-ray might not be enough

Dental x-rays might or might not reveal the obvious. And what’s obvious to you is likely not always obvious to your patient.

Patients’ preconceived ideas about the diagnostic consultation or their inability to see what you (the dental professional) see can create barriers to case acceptance and favorable treatment outcomes. Based on previous experiences or assumptions (for example, about money), patients may be skeptical about your stated discoveries or may even second-guess what you highlight in their x-rays.

This is an instance where more is better.

More visible evidence can support your diagnosis.
More supportive evidence can create diagnostic transparency and trust.

How AI can help increase case acceptance

Inserting AI technology into your treatment presentations can help increase transparency and decrease perception of bias by providing this “more.” For example, by adding color to the otherwise “bland” technical data in a standard x-ray, a trained AI system can sharpen patients’ understanding of what you are showing them and support your diagnosis with objective visuals.

Accuracy

Studies reveal impressive results around the accuracy of computer vision AI applications for dental radiology:

A 2018 study found that convolutional neural networks (CNNs; a type of AI) accurately identified dental caries on periapical radiographs at rates of 89% for premolars and 88% for molars.
A 2020 study found that AI could identify caries on digital radiographs with a 97.1% accuracy rate.
A second 2020 study determined that AI successfully detected 94.6% of dental restorations on x-rays.

As with everything related to computers, these studies also show the rapid evolution in AI accuracy. So it’s no surprise that the FDA approved Pearl’s Second Opinion as the first AI software to read dental x-rays in 2022.

Objectivity

As noted earlier, some patients sit down in your chair with certain assumptions. Even those who don’t might not “feel” that a recommended treatment plan is necessary. Being able to provide all of them with objective evidence of a problem that needs fixing can give you—and them—an advantage in improving their level of care.

As Pearl founder and CEO Ophir Tanz puts it:

“Computers are just better than us at many things, like math or crunching numbers…But they’re worse at issuing care and having empathy and being able to take lots of disparate data sets and come up with a treatment plan, etc. I think that we should be embracing the technology to support us in things that it is uniquely positioned to enable us to do better.”

In other words, AI can come alongside you in the operatory and complement—not replace—your expertise with its objective analysis.

The objective benefits of AI include:

Assisting with a difficult diagnosis
Presenting an on-the-spot “second opinion”
Helping uncover otherwise undetected pathology

Clarity

Informing a patient they need treatment is one thing; getting them to believe it can be another. AI can not only boost your patient education efforts, but also improve patient engagement through features such as:

Adding annotations on x-rays that increase a patient’s understanding of your diagnosis
Clarifying diagnostic details so patients can make more informed treatment decisions

The bottom line? Patient care improves when transparency and trust are in the mix. By supporting your diagnosis with objective, chairside evidence, AI can strengthen your communication skills and help boost your case acceptance rate.

Pearl’s Ophir Tanz sums it up:

“AI enables us to drive the highest standard of care.…We’re just delivering a level of truth that is totally transparent, that is totally verifiable. But (it) is also probably statistically quite good. And we should be embracing truth above all else because that is what’s going to lead to healthier patients.”

Explore the following resources to understand AI’s potential for improving accuracy, objectivity, and clarity relative to treatment:

Leading AI technology is helping build trust between providers and patients

Pearl is a global dental AI leader assisting dentists across six continents with robust clinical pathology detection.

Get acquainted with Pearl.

Or…

Curious how AI can benefit your dental practice?

Request a free live demo.