Laser Dentistry

Laser dentistry is a totally new dental treatment modality that is rapidly gaining popularity among dental practitioners. Laser dentistry takes advantage of new developments in dental technology to offer dramatically superior dentistry experiences that produce fewer side effects and have less risk than traditional treatments. In this article we will examine some of the benefits of laser dentistry over traditional dental treatments. We will also explore some of the reasons why dentists who use lasers remain difficult to find despite the large amount of scientific support for the superiority and lack of risk involved with laser-based dental treatments.

As far as much of the field of medicine has advanced during the past fifty years, established dental treatments are still clumsy and antiquated. For example, a regular old filling involves boring into the tooth enamel with a tiny drill bit. There is substantial threat that your tooth will crack open in this very common treatment, in which case the tooth would eventually be lost.

After the hole has been drilled, a little glob of metal amalgam or ceramic is placed into the gap in your tooth enamel, with an expectation that the piece of amalgam will wear out and need to be replaced in a relatively short time. By the time that is the case, there will often be a need for even more destruction of the tooth enamel. Once the wound reaches a certain level of depth, a root canal will have become unavoidable. This means the whole middle section of the tooth getting drilled through, destroying the delicate neural tissue that lives inside.

Dental laser treatment alters this sequence of events a lot. A dentist who uses laser technology to give you a filling will likely not need to use any anesthetic. There are no moving pieces inside the laser dental machinery and also no risk of overheating or of causing a fissure in the enamel. The laser actually kills the bacteria that cause the cavity to begin with, meaning there is a greatly reduced chance of complication after the procedure. What's more, much less of the healthy tooth tissue is sacrificed in the procedure, and the end result will likely be much more resilient.

For our purposes here, we have used the basic dental filling as an example, but laser dentistry technology goes further than just this type of common procedure. Dental lasers also facilitate dental surgery that is remarkably clean and precise. Operations that have used this equipment often have no need for any stitches, cause very little blood loss, and have a greatly reduced risk of becoming infected because the laser itself actually destroys the bacteria that are present in the area where the surgery is being performed. As a result of this, oral surgery that makes use of laser technology usually heals significantly more quickly and significantly more cleanly than ordinary oral surgery modalities.

The primary reason why it is currently quite challenging to find an affordable laser dentist is largely because the technology is simply still so new. I know, for example, that the use of lasers is only starting to become available to dental consumers in my original home town. Like in many smaller metropolitan areas, Tampa dentists are lagging behind in this critical area while riskier procedures such as sedation dentistry become increasingly popular.

The laser dentistry equipment remains quite expensive, and there are yet relatively few dentists who possess expertise in making use of it. On account of the dramatically increased safety and effectiveness of these laser dentistry techniques, it is almost certainly assured that they will become more widely used as time goes by, as a new crop of dentists receive training in their clinical applications.