The Next Frontier In Dental Equipment

Laser dentistry is an up and coming method of dentistry that is quickly gaining ground among dental practitioners. It takes advantage of new advances in laser technology to provide more expedient dentistry experiences that have much less risk than traditional treatments. Today we will discuss some of the benefits of laser dentistry over other popular dental treatments. We will furthermore delve into some of the reasons why laser dentists are still so difficult to find regardless of the tremendous scientific support for the effectiveness and great safety profile of laser treatment of dental conditions.

As far as much of the field of medicine has advanced during the past half century, established dental treatments remain clumsy and antiquated. An ordinary filling, for example, requires grinding through the tooth enamel with a tiny drill bit. There is a great deal of risk of tooth fissure in this very common treatment, in which case an eventual loss of the tooth would be likely.

Once the hole is drilled out, a piece of metal amalgam or ceramic is placed into the gap in your tooth enamel, with a high probability that the piece of amalgam will wear out and need to be replaced in a relatively short time. When this time has arrived, there will usually be a need for additional drilling. After the hole becomes large enough, a root canal will be necessary. This means the full inner section of the tooth getting drilled out, destroying the delicate neural tissue that lives inside.

Dental laser treatment alters this dynamic a great deal. A dentist making use of laser techniques to fill a cavity will likely not need to use any anesthetic. The laser machinery has no moving parts and also no risk of becoming too hot or of causing a fissure in the enamel. The laser actually destroys the bacteria that create the cavity to begin with, meaning there is a greatly reduced chance of ill effects from the procedure. Also, hardly any of the undamaged tooth tissue is destroyed during the procedure, and the end result is likely to last significantly longer.

We have considered the regular cavity filling as our example, but new dental laser technology has more to offer than this type of everyday procedure. Dental lasers also make possible dental surgery that is remarkably clean and precise. Procedures that are done using this equipment often present no need for sutures or stitches, result in minimal blood loss, and have a substantially reduced danger of infection because the laser itself actually kills off the bacteria that are living in the area where the surgery is being performed. For this reason, oral surgery that uses laser technology tends to heal quite a bit more quickly and quite a bit more cleanly than the usual oral surgery modalities.

The only reason that it is presently quite hard to locate an affordable laser dentistry clinic is because the field itself is still so new. The equipment is still very expensive, and there are presently relatively few dentists who have achieved proficiency in making use of it. Because of the dramatically increased efficacy and safety of these types of treatments, it is almost certainly guaranteed that they will be more widely practiced as time goes by, as an increasing number of dentists receive training in their use.