[Patients with unusual requests for extractions 1. professional standard versus patient's autonomy]

Assertive patients will, in the future, more readily appear with their own diagnosis. As a result, dentists will more often be confronted with sometimes rather unusual requests from patients. An extreme request from a patient is the removal of (all) teeth. The central issue in this article is how to deal with such a request. The conclusion is that the patient's autonomy is limited by the professional standards of the dentist and the patient's capacity to assess in a reasonable way what is in his own best interests.