Modern Dentistry

[vakkotaur]

When I was a fairly little kid, I had the typical fears of the dentist probably due to the TV portrayals of dental visits as painful things to be avoided and only barely endured to lessen pains already present. Sure, the idea of prevention was there, but there's a reason the high-pitched whine of a tiny pneumatic drill is in the special class of sounds that nobody likes. An actual dental visit did nothing to change my feelings on this. I still recall the line about how "This will only feel like a mosquito bite." The &%^$ it did, unless it was supposed to be some mutant steel hyper-mosquito. I also recall the dentist urging me to quiet down as I was "scaring his other patients" out in the lobby. From my point of view, they had darn well ought to be scared. I avoided dentists for some time.

Many years later, I went to a dentist that had a reputation for being painless. I don't know if it was an advance in anesthesia or recognition that the "mosquito" was more like an angry hornet, but this fellow used a topical anesthetic to numb the injection site before using the needle. I recall feeling some slight pain, despite the reputation, at least on a second visit (Did I acclimate to the anesthetic of a couple days earlier?) but overall, it was a significant improvement on earlier experiences.

Then I moved and had no idea who to see, and thus saw nobody for some time. Maybe you've been seeing a dentist regularly and have experienced, slowly, the changes I experienced rather suddenly. Recently I experienced that I am now living in The Future where dentistry doesn't automatically involve pain. Stuff I'd read about a while back, and wondered how long before it would see general use, is being used now. A pulsed water & laser system has replaced the contemptible high-speed pneumatic drill. What that doesn't get, gets a lower speed grinder setup - and the water pulses numb things enough that no anesthetic is generally needed (though I was told I could get such at any time if I thought it was called for). The only high speed whine was from a diamond polisher. With no injected anesthetic, there was also no time of weird numb-face. "Anything I need to do or not do?" "No. Just go on with things." Oh, and there was no waiting around for X-rays to be developed. Even those are done by digital camera now. I'd known of such things as sistaur's vet clinic had switched to digital X-ray a few years ago, but this was the first time I'd experienced it myself.

Alright, it's not quite Star Trek easy with someone waving a tiny gadget around me and it simply being done, but I'll take it. That regular visit every six months that is recommended? That's already scheduled, for once.

Comments

[malterre.livejournal.com]

It is amazing to see what has changed only in our lifetime my teeth cleanings are now done without picks-I don't have to have a two-day headache post visit.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

It is. Every once in a while I get some odd reminder that the cool new (or even futuristic) stuff I saw growing up is now considered terribly obsolete.

[willowisp.livejournal.com]

My regular dentist appointments (every four months since I'm diabetic and therefore high risk) are relatively painless, even though they still use picks. I haven't had a cavity in quite a while, so I can't say how those are dealt with. My dentist and her staff try very hard to make visits as stress-free as possible, so I imagine it's not so bad.

Root canals are still something to have a healthy fear of, though.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Fillings seem to done with sort of light-activated-to-set stuff. The area to be cleared gets the water & laser bit, the grinder, maybe a bit of polish, and is then dried so the stuff can stick. It's put into place, excess topped/wiped off and a fiber with bluish (near UV?) light used to fast-cure. The diamond polisher might come back to bring things truly down to even with the enamel again. Really, the only awkward time was between the photo-set and the final polish when the bite is off from any weird protrusions.

The general cleaning still used picks, but those by themselves haven't really bothered me. And it was some considerable time since my last dental visit. I suspect that in March, my next appointment, things will go very quickly indeed.

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

The UV-set polymer fillings are amazing. They take far less time to do, last longer, contain no heavy metals that linger in the bod, don't block x-rays so future problems can be spotted earlier, and to top it off, look like there's no filling at all.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

The original estimate for the work included one amalgam filling in a rear tooth where it wouldn't show. When the time came to actually do it, though, it was "Well, let's try the polymer here anyway." It worked. I was not about to argue with that.

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

I'm in the final stages of a dental implant, and damned if it hasn't been the least painful procedure I've had yet. And digital imaging hasn't just made x-ray results faster, it's made them safer. Power levels required now are but a fraction of what they were when I was growing up. Nice to know I'm getting less radiation shoved through my bod.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

I was rather impressed that what X-ray gear I saw had a top setting that few things used to go down to. Top end seems to be 70 kV on the plate, at least for routine dental X-ray. Last I was around such things, I was impressed they'd gotten down to around 90 kV from 100+. The X-rays are certainly "softer" and I suspect the exposure time is lower as well.