Dentistry going increasingly high tech

[thewayne]

moiraj posted in her blog about having a root canal and the doctor talking about robots in Dentistry. I seem to have the weirdest dental luck: it seems that I only have things go weird with my teeth when I'm traveling. September of last year I was in Colorado for a few days, 600 miles from home, and almost a week from when it would be possible to see my local dentist, and a filling cracked and fell out. It didn't cause any problem -- heat or cold sensitivity -- but my tongue wouldn't leave the irregularity alone. At one point I was out doing errands, and while getting in my car and leaving one store I noticed a dental practice. I decided that I had nothing to lose and they might be able to take a look at my tooth, so I went in.

And they saw me immediately. Well, almost immediately, after I did all the paperwork crap.

They did an x-ray, and unfortunately didn't do anything about the tooth as they estimated that I only had about a millimeter of material and if they were to breech that, I'd require a root canal. So they did nothing.

But the tech was cool. They had digital x-rays, which I'd seen before, but they showed them to me on a tablet, which was cool.

But that wasn't the really cool part. They had a computer-controlled milling machine for making crowns. They had blanks about the size of an array of teeth, they'd put a blank in the machine, and it would start cutting out the excess material. I'm curious if they did an impression of the tooth to be replaced and it did 3-D tracing to get the contours right, or what it did.

I'm not sure what I think about actual robots in dentistry, it would have to have some very good fuzzy logic to respond to vocalizations for pain or if the patient twitches or moves.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Coo! Considerably more advanced than the tech I remember from my last visit, much too long ago. About the most sophisticated tech I remember was one procedure, when I was maybe 10 or so, was applying a thin plastic film to my teeth. It worked very well indeed - the bacteria simply had no targets, give or take small breaks. (I believe it was some kind of fluid, rapidly cured by UV)

I think I'll hold off on my next visit until finances aren't quite so cinder-y. Anything essential would be covered, of course, but not always the best way, and dental procedures are never exactly cheap.