Regulating Dental Laboratories

Dental laboratories have been experiencing a sort of consolidation into bigger companies as the ones that are making profits are able to purchase smaller ones who make less profit and older dental technicians retiring. Dental laboratories are entities not overseen by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) even though they deal with materials that affect a person’s health. Rather they are watched over by the National Association of Dental Laboratories (NADL). Erin Robinson of Dentistry iQ brings to the forefront the interesting dilemma that dental laboratories face without strict regulation in her recent article “What’s in Your Mouth?”: Clarifying the relationship between dentist, patient, and lab.” Price gouging, inferior materials being used to create dental crowns, implants, and bridges is a result. Reasonable prices being charged by the dental labs for creating dental materials requested by the dentists is a definite benefit of strict regulation. It also ensures the dentists and patients that the laboratories they are associated with are using materials that are not hazardous to the patient’s health. The lack of communication between the labs, dentists, and patients usually lead to problems that involve the patient’s health and often lead to lawsuits. Bottom line, stricter regulations will mean that dental laboratories will have to keep their license up to date, charge fair prices for the materials made, prevents cheaper, less regulated products being used in creating dental materials, and overall more accountable to their products they produce.