Dentist Castle Rock Talks How Diagnodent Can Aid

Diagnodent aids in the detection of caries states Dentist Castle Rock. Even very small lesions are detected at the earliest stage, enabling you to protect and preserve the tooth substance. More and more patients place value on healthy and attractive teeth. In order to maintain them, the earliest possible care is essential. Diagnodent is a tool used for the early detection of cavities. The advanced technology uses sound pulse and laser to detect caries earlier than traditional methods allowed, so that treatment can commence immediately limiting the amount of decay allowed to occur. This helps preserve the maximum amount of natural healthy tooth structure.

How it Benefits

A win win situation for the patient and their teeth. A decayed tooth found in this manner can be restored with a very small filling. The smaller a filling is, the longer it lasts and the less expensive it is to repair. Dentist Castle Rock encourage regular dental check-ups, cleanings and home care. Early detection of problems minimizes the entire process related to major tooth repair and potential discomfort associated with larger cavities. The Diagnodent allows us to locate hidden decay, and with conservative treatment, stop the spread of disease before it destroys the tooth from within. New technologies move us a giant step forward to helping you achieve the goal of minimally invasive dentistry. We cannot cure what we cannot see! The Diagnodent allows the dentist and hygienist to monitor areas beneath the hard enamel. Locating hidden decay before it destroys tooth structure is a major goal for modern dentistry. The Diagnodent is useful on adult and baby teeth. It provides instant feedback on the health of a tooth. A pen like probe glides over the tooth and constantly checks for decay. A number scale and an alarm signal the dentist when there are signs of decay hidden from view. This process is completely safe and pain free. The extensive use of fluoride in toothpastes and drinking water has made tooth enamel harder and more resistant to decay. This can make diagnosing decay under the surface more difficult because the decay can start through microscopic defects or grooves and pits in the hard surface enamel and easily spread to the softer dentin beneath the surface. X-rays and checking with an explorer are limited in detecting sub surface decay, especially in its early stages.

Dentist Castle Rock Talks How Diagnodent Can Aid

Technology

Any spot of decay can threaten the integrity of an entire tooth. This technology quickly identifies the tiniest bit of tooth decay. Removing tooth decay early is key to preventing an onset of future dental issues. Dental exams used to be spent sitting through lengthy poking and prodding sessions to find tooth decay. Those exams turned out to only be 50 to 75 percent effective because cavities can hide along fissure lines or inside biting or occlusal surfaces. The cavity also has to be as large as the probe head for the dentist to find it. Dentist Castle Rock is pleased to offer a new and revolutionary way to detect and find cavities. Diagnodent is allowing dentists to replace the old ways of finding cavities and replace them with an innovative means of detecting cavities. Diagnodent technology uses a laser diode to inspect the patient’s teeth. It compares reflection wavelength against a healthy baseline wavelength to uncover tooth decay. The benchmark reading is taken by aiming the laser onto a healthy enamel tooth surface and then the laser is directed into all suspect areas.

Valuation of Diagnodent

When should fissure sealants be applied for preventive or therapeutic reasons? One school of thought maintains that it is more cost-effective to target sealants and place them only on teeth which are likely to become carious, rather than adopting a simpler but more expensive blanket policy which includes low risk teeth and individuals. The important point to stress, however, is that the success or failure of these selective approaches relies heavily on the quality of the original diagnosis of the presence and extent of caries. Accurate sensitive diagnosis is imperative if the patients are to be categorized into risk groups on the basis of their past disease status and present disease activity explains Dentist Castle Rock. It is also becoming financially important that practitioners are able to identify high risk individuals, since the amount and complexity of the preventive care invested in these patients will largely depend upon the results of the practitioners’ diagnostic assessments. The aim of this in vivo study was to evaluate the effectiveness of Diagnodent, visual and radiographic examination in detecting non-invasive diagnosis of occlusal caries in children. In this study, 92 untreated molars with sound occlusal surface or enamel and/or dentin caries were selected from 28 healthy patients, aged 7-17 years. All teeth were examined by two researchers using each of three diagnostic system (Diagnodent, visual, radiographic). Interpretation of the Diagnodent value and the radiolucency on the bitewing film were combined with the visual examination to decide where the teeth had to be opened. Depth of caries was recorded. Sensitivities and specificities were calculated for each diagnostic method using the biopsy scores as gold standard. Intra- and inter-examiner reproducibility for each method was assessed by calculating Cohen’s kappa. The kappa value of inter-examiner reproducibility was highest for visual examination (0.935), and lowest for Diagnodent measurements (0.698). Intra-examiner reproducibility of Diagnodent measurements was also good (0.745 and 0.665). Sensitivity and specificity for Diagnodent, visual examination and bitewing radiography were 0.86/0.80, 0.69/1.00 and 0.36/1.00, respectively. It was concluded that Diagnodent with a high sensitivity may be useful adjunct to visual examination with a high specificity in detecting occlusal caries.