Laser dentistry is a totally new paradigm in dental treatment that is quickly gaining ground among dental practitioners. It takes advantage of new developments in laser technology to provide dramatically superior dental treatments that have much less risk than traditional treatments. Today we will discuss the primary benefits of laser dentistry over traditional dental treatments. We will furthermore go into some of the reasons why laser dentistry services remain difficult to find despite the dramatic empirical support for the efficacy and great safety profile of laser-based dental treatments.



Even though the practice of medical treatment in general has advanced so quickly, established dentistry techniques remain rather violent and unfocused. For example, a regular old filling is actually performed by grinding into the outer layer of the tooth with a hot drill bit. There is substantial risk that your tooth will crack open in this simple treatment, in which case an eventual loss of the tooth would likely be precipitated.

Once the hole is drilled out, a bit of metal amalgam or ceramic is placed into the gap in your tooth enamel, with an expectation that the artificial replacement will wear out and require replacement in a relatively short time. By the time that is the case, there will frequently be a need for additional drilling. After the hole grows deep enough, a root canal will become unavoidable. This procedure involves the whole inner section of the tooth being drilled through, destroying the delicate nerve tissue that lies within.

Laser dentistry alters this situation a great deal. A dentist making use of laser technology to repair a cavity will likely have no need for any anesthetic at all. The laser tool has no moving parts and also little risk of becoming too hot or of causing a fissure in the enamel. The laser itself destroys the bacteria that cause the cavity to begin with, which means there is a substantially reduced risk of ill effects from the procedure. Additionally, much less of the undamaged tooth enamel is ruined by the procedure, and the end result is likely to be much more resilient.

We have considered the regular dental filling as our example, but laser dentistry technology extends far beyond this type of everyday procedure. Dental lasers also facilitate dental surgery that is extremely clean and precise. Operations that have used these techniques often require no stitches or sutures, produce almost no bleeding, and have a greatly reduced risk of infection because the laser beam actually kills off the bacteria that are living in the area being operated on. For this reason, oral surgery that makes use of laser technology tends to heal significantly more quickly and significantly more cleanly than the usual oral surgery modalities.

The primary reason that it is presently so challenging to find an affordable laser dentistry clinic is largely because the technology is simply still so new. The equipment is still very expensive, and there are presently a fairly small number dentists who have achieved proficiency in using it. Because of the substantially improved efficacy and safety of these types of treatments, it is virtually guaranteed that they will become more widely available within the next decade, as a growing number of dentists receive training in their clinical applications.