Slashdot Mirror
Plasma Needle to Replace Dentist's Drill
dylanduck writes "From the New Scientist Tech article: "Sticking a needle with a flaming plasma tip into your mouth may not at first strike you as much of an improvement on conventional dentistry. However, the plasma needle, which is cold and painless to the touch, could be just the panacea we have been waiting for.""
Lets hope the power control software isn't buggy and doesn't run on Windows (okay okay I'm karma whoring now!). I would hate to have my head blown off by a dentist sporting a phased plasma drill in the 40 watt range. Sounds far fetched but Canada's Therac-25 radiation therapy machine zapped some cancer sufferers killing three. I seem to recall there was a similar failure with a laser surgery machine in France which blinded some people but I couldn't find a reference, the French probably covered it up.
They dont seem too worried about that, so either its a microscopic amount, or it completely burns it all at the tip.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Actually, the thing most people fear about the dentist is needles-in-the-mouth. They're an uncomfortable and sometimes shockingly painful experience (depending on the dentist and the location of the injection), and it's the act of deliberately subjecting yourself to pain that gets a lot of people worked up. All the other fears tend to be associative.
Root-canal and other invasive surgery notwithstanding (and I'm going through a lot of that right now, thank you very much), if this technology can allow minor surgery - fillings, mainly - to be undertaken without needles, I daresay it'll be a brilliant breakthrough. If the patient feels confident they are not going to feel pain, they won't be (as) afraid.
That being said, my latest dentist is a sodding genius, who managed to perform a re-root-treatment without anaesthetic, and without pain, within an hour.
Meta will eat itself
To me, it seems like the pain involved with getting cavities filled is due to the high frequency vibrations caused by the drill, not the actual drilling itself.
Drilling doesn't hit any nerves. As I understand it, the heat caused by drilling is what triggers pain receptors in the pulp. If you want to say that this heat is due to "vibrations" rather than "the actual drilling" (whatever that means), then fine. Either way, if this "plasma needle" doesn't heat up the tooth, it should be painless, which is the point of the article.
"Nothing is poison and everything is poison; the difference is in the dose." - Paracelsus
There used to be a group of dentistry (and probably still is) that believed in not using painkillers when filling cavities, especially with children, so they'd learn to brush better and not get any cavities. That, or the dental schools pre-screened for sadists.