Dentists are seeing up to ten per cent of time being wasted every day by people missing their appointments.
Jim Du Molin wrote in the Dental Management and Marketing Management blog that research has found that one-in-ten appointments are missed by patients every day.
He noted there are a number of courses of action when people miss their appointment, the most common being to issue a warning for a first offence, a fee for a second and finally striking the person from the practice for a third.
Meanwhile, US-based local paper the Courier Journal reported that Dr Ted Raybould, a Lexington dentist and University of Kentucky professor, recently argued that anxiety should not be a factor when patients miss a trip to the dentist.
He claimed that putting off examinations can see people having to take a trip to an emergency dentist when a problem gets out of hand and in any case, new innovations in treatments and medicines now mean that there can be little pain and faster healing times.