Old Alabama Family Dentistry

Your Dental Jedi Warrior

What do you associate with the movie "Star Wars"—Wookies, Darth Vader and Yoda? Or did you think about Luke Skywalker and his cool light saber? Remember guys lined up outside the theaters, pretending they were fighting the Dark Side with their plastic light sabers from F.W. Woolworth's Five and Dime? Did you ever imagine that a light saber could become one of the coolest technologies used in the dental office?

The Force be with you

The field of dentistry is changing in leaps and bounds. There are treatments and instruments used today or just on the horizon that could have been taken straight from a sci-fi novel written 30 years ago. But today, a dentist can fight the evil force of the Dark Side with a modern light saber that has the potential of revolutionizing dental surgical procedures. This light saber is called a laser.

Essentially, a laser uses a concentrated beam of light (dot of light between fingers in photo) to take the place of a drill and scalpel. Think of a laser this way: A laser beam is like an arrow streaking toward a bullseye. The arrow hits a specific spot on the target. A regular beam of light, such as a flashlight is like using a shotgun to hit a bullseye. The shotgun sprays pellets all over the target.

How this works in your mouth

Let's say you have a cavity. Until lasers were first approved and used in 1960, the treatment method would have been to use a drill to remove the cavity from your tooth. (The photo shows the difference between using a drill and a laser.) You would need a local anesthetic. There would be a high-pitched whine from the drill, and you would have lost some tooth structure. You would have experienced pain and may have needed pain medication afterwards. With a laser, the beam of light removes basically only the decayed material from the tooth. There is no high-pitched whine. In fact, you likely would hear a popping noise when the laser is activated. You might not have any pain or need an anesthetic.

The laser can also be used on soft tissues, such as the gums. Perhaps you have a "gummy smile." Gummy smile means that the gum covers more of the tooth than it should. Using a laser, the dentist can easily remove that extra gum tissue to give you a beautiful new smile. How does it do that? The laser beam heats the water in a cell until the water boils. The super-hot water bursts the cell. The cell vaporizes—poof!

Sometimes a wisdom tooth needs help pushing through the gum tissue. The laser can easily and quickly remove the tissue covering the tooth allowing the tooth to move into position. The laser causes less swelling than using a scalpel to surgically remove the tissue. And surgery requires stitches.

To infinity and beyond

But wait, there's even more good news. The laser can also sterilize tissue. When a laser is used to treat periodontal disease, it kills the bacteria hiding in the sulcus pockets around your teeth. The sulcus is a gap, or pouch, where bacteria can hide and multiply if you don't maintain regular oral hygiene care—that good old brushing and flossing routine.

And then the news gets better for periodontal disease sufferers. The laser also promotes tissue healing; so, the gum tissue returns to a healthy state faster and reattaches to the tooth more quickly than with other treatments.

Are those the only uses? Definitely not. Let's say you have a new denture, but the frenum on your upper lip is too long. The frenum is a fold of skin that attaches the upper lip to the gums. There is also a frenum under your tongue that tacks the tongue to the floor of your mouth. Pull up your upper lip and you can see the frenum. The notch in the denture pinches the frenum and makes it uncomfortable to wear the denture. A laser trims back the frenum so that the notch in the denture fits the soft tissue. If a scalpel was used, the frenum would have bled, but a laser prevents bleeding.

If you need to wear braces, the laser can be used to trim soft tissues to allow an orthodontic appliance to fit comfortably and snugly.

Laser treatment has been successfully used on oral cancer tissue. Only the cancer cells are destroyed. Using a laser reduces some of the treatment risks and side effects. Some offices routinely use the DIAGNOdent laser to detect cavities.

These are just a few of the uses for a laser in the dental practice.

Can you have a light saber treatment?

Understand that just because the laser has been around since 1960, it is not the norm in a dental practice. There are dentists who have replaced their drill and scalpel with laser equipment. Others are not so certain this is the way to go. Laser equipment is quite expensive. Even though regular surgical procedures can also be expensive, some feel the laser adds too much cost to their treatments.

And also understand that the laser is not a perfect instrument. There are some procedures that it cannot be used to treat that will need conventional treatments. Lasers can't—

• remove amalgam (silver) fillings
• remove porcelain onlays or crowns
• completely eliminate the need for a handpiece (a drill)

The laser is still controversial, but this "Star Wars" phenomenon has the potential for shining its way to a bright future.

We like to keep our patients informed about new technologies they may have read or heard about to help dispel mis-information and to let them know we always have their best interest at heart.

The next time you visit our office, bring a list of questions with you that we can discuss. Working together as a team, we will plan the best dental treatment for your situation.