Six Technologies That Will Shape The Future Of Teeth In Dentistry
Dental, when we heard the word our spine freezes during our childhood days cos dentist go live to poking inside our mouth using edgy and frightening Katana and drillers. Rest his huge chair illuminated by blinding light say a lengthy story.
The six future technologies that takes Dentistry to the next level.
Artificial Intelligence
Dentists implement software to get insights in clinical decision making. These will develop further to integrate A.I. algorithms to enable dentist to find the best modalities for their patients.
On top of churning health data, A.I.-based algorithms can help specialists better tend to dental conditions. Researchers in 2019 developed a machine learning method to accurately quantify immune cells in the vicinity of oral cancer cells. This gives better insights into the spread of and resistance to cancer; thereby helping in determining chances of survival. Such approaches can become standard practice in the near future.
Smart Toothbrush
The smart electric toothbrush brushes your teeth the right way through its app and offers kids fun games to keep up the good habit of regularly cleaning their teeth. Philips’ Sonicare smart toothbrush comes packed with sensors in its handle. These provide real-time feedback via a companion app warning you if you are applying too much pressure, where you are brushing and even coaches the user as to how to brush properly. And there are several such devices on the market from companies like Colgate and Oral-B.
Augmented Reality
You might be familiar with Augmented Reality (AR) through social media apps; it’s the same technology that Snapchat uses to superimpose filters on your face during your guilt trip selfie with a dog face filter. But AR also found a home in dentistry for both educational and clinical purposes.
Image Navigation’s DentSim Simulator pairs AR with a mannequin on which students can perform procedures while receiving immediate feedback as their movements are tracked. This helps them identify faster where they should improve and develop their skills in the process. It’s already in by 8 500 students in dental schools around the world.
In dental practice, the technology is more prevalent in reconstructive and aesthetic procedures in order to help patients know what they will look like after the treatment. SmartTek and Kapanu have developed such AR apps that use their phone or tablet’s camera to overlay virtual depictions of the improved set of teeth prior to the procedure. This allows patients and dentists to configure features of their teeth such as height and spacing to their liking before they even enter the surgery room.
Virtual Reality
Today, only a few students can peek over the shoulder of the surgeon during an operation and it is challenging to learn the tricks of the trade like that. With a virtual reality camera, surgeons can stream operations globally and allow medical students to actually be there in the OR using their VR goggles. Dentistry even outpaced other fields of medicine in adopting this method. Back in 2015, Nobel Biocare held the first dental surgery filmed through VR and allowed observers to virtually assist the whole procedure from the surgeon’s perspective. In comparison, the first VR-recorded surgery was performed at the Royal London hospital in 2016. The technology can further be used to help dentists build on their empathy skills through simulations putting them in the shoes of their patients or in challenging situations.
On the patient side, VR might be the solution to our dentist’s office anxiety. An experiment with 69 participants showed that VR can be used as an effective distraction tool in dentistry. Patients wore goggles which displayed calming natural scenes, and remembered the treatments more positively afterwards. OperaVR is one such VR tool for reducing dental anxiety.
Regenerative Dentistry
We’ve come to expect to have our teeth fall off with age or with damage and have them replaced by prostheses. However, the field of regenerative dentistry challenges this preconceived idea with developments that can lead to self-healing teeth and biological therapy for damaged teeth.
Previously, researchers from the University of Nottingham and Harvard University developed dental fillings that allow teeth to heal themselves. These fillings stimulate stem cells to promote the growth of dentin, or the main constituent of our teeth. This effectively enables patients to regrow teeth damaged through dental disease and potentially eliminate the need for root canals!
New discoveries from researchers at Karolinska Institutet in 2020 can fasten development in the field of regenerative medicine. They were able to map the differentiation pathways of the cells that make up human teeth. They also discovered new cell types and cell layers in teeth that can impact on tooth sensitivity. Isn’t it exciting to think that you might not need to have false teeth to replace your own when you are old, but you might grow new ones? The tooth-fairy will be very excited, for sure!
Computer design and 3D-printing
3D-printing does not need any introduction considering the buzz it generated in healthcare a while ago with the technology’s potential to print medicines, prosthetics and even organ replicas. Its importance was further highlighted during the Covid-19 crisis to bypass supply chains to meet hospitals’ demands. As the technology is set to become an integral part of healthcare practice, it will also become incorporated in dental labs.
Computer-assisted design (CAD) and computer-assisted manufacture (CAM), including 3D-printing, are already revolutionizing the sector; they are turning them into low-cost, more effective digital labs. Traditionally, when a patient needs a crown, a dentist must make a mould of the tooth and fashion a temporary crown, then wait for the dental laboratory to make a permanent one.
With CAD/CAM technology, the tooth is drilled to prepare it for the crown and a picture is taken with a computer. This image is then relayed to a machine that makes the crown right in the office. With a 3D printer doing the hard work, dental labs eliminate the bottleneck of manual modelling and let the business grow. Stratasys, Envisiontech or FormLabs offer such high-tech solutions for dental labs.
3D printers are also able to produce orthodontic models, surgical guides, aligners, retainers and more dental equipment faster and precisely; tasks that would take longer with traditional methods. This helps in improving workflows, reducing error and the amount of labour needed, which ultimately endows the technology with time and cost-efficiency.
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