
Fear no more your dentist visits
Fear no more your dentist visits
Fear no more your dentist visits. In the very near future paying your dentist a visit will not be a scary affair any longer thanks to a new dental procedure. New tooth decay treatment allows teeth to repair themselves making drilling and filling a thing of the past. No more dreading going to the dentist.
Researchers at King College London are working on a new procedure for tooth decay treatment that would fix cavities without the need for drilling and filling. The two-step process, called Electrically Accelerated and Enhanced Remineralisation (EAER), involves an electric current that spurs decayed teeth to repair themselves.
The manner in which teeth are repaired today is less than ideal, frightening most of us to not repeat the visit also not an ideal response as teeth need to be kept in check to avoid major decay. The new procedure under study and hopefully put in use very soon is much kinder to the patient and better for the teeth, but as costly as current dental treatments unfortunately.
How is this new procedure going to differ from the current one? First, the damaged part of the outer layer of the tooth is prepared. Then an electric current is used to stimulate minerals, such as calcium and phosphate, to reenter the tooth and repair it. The current used is smaller than the charges presently used for other dental procedures. So as you can see no invasive methods are used, such as injections to numb the area as currently used and no drilling or filling.
While this new method will treat tooth decay at various stages, the electric current will not work on cavities and decay that are too far-gone.
This method could be at your dentist in three years given that investments come through to develop this new device.