Bacteria love hanging out between your teeth—food gets caught there, and brushing can’t reach all the germs. If the bugs settle in and form a cavity, your dentist must drill through your tooth just to get at it. But now dentists can trade their drills for a simple treatment that stops early-stage cavities.
The Icon system lets dentists halt decay between teeth. Usually when a dentist spots an early cavity—when bacteria have eaten away enough tooth such that it’s a weak lattice but hasn’t yet degraded into a true cavity’s sinkhole—he prescribes an enamel-strengthening fluoride rinse and hopes the tooth heals itself. If that doesn’t work, the only option is drilling through healthy tooth to get to the problem spot.Icon, developed by dental-materials manufacturer DMG, does away with both the drill and the waiting time. A dentist simply slides a thin plastic applicator between the patient’s teeth and squirts the cavity with hydrochloric acid, which etches away the enamel to access the tooth’s deeper layers. Using a fresh applicator, he then injects a low-viscosity resin into the gaps in the tooth’s lattice and hardens the resin with a quick flash of high-energy blue light to fortify the tooth.
DMG is working on a version that could hold up to the wear and tear of a tooth’s chewing surfaces, which company president George Wolfe hopes to have ready in a year. The sooner the better, he says: “One of my greatest fears is having to hold down my scared kid for a filling. Hopefully, I’ll never have to.”
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The first issue of 2012 is a great one: we've got stories on how to make planes, tanks, subs, and soldiers invisible. Also, how the U.S. is reengineering homeland security at the southern border, inside the deepest mine in the world, and our predictions for the year to come.
Sparta thank you, scientist, THANK YOU, man i hate those drills.
Nice! I like the idea of drill free! I mean really. Wow.
Jess
www.web-privacy.cz.tc
Hmm. I can imagine the new implication for movies. This tool will definitely show up in an action or horror film eventually.
The procedure would likely require the use of eye protection for all parties...don't you think?
-Chihuahuas are the longest lived breed of dog
-longest movie title ever: night of the day of the dawn of the son of the bride of the return of the revenge of the terror of the attack of the evil, mutant, alien, flesh eating, hell bound, zombified living dead part 2: in shocking 2-D (1991)
-grasses only started appearing after the dinosaurs were extinct
-the estimated diameter of the universe is 620,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles
-May 6th is national no homework day
-if a cow dies of heat stroke the gases inside it expand until the carcass explodes
-cows navigate by looking at the ground
-a study shows that cows produce 35% more milk when listening to Elvis Presley music
- A cricket can't hear its own chirping
-in New York it's illegal to do any thing illegal
-the Eiffel Tower is repainted every seven years, and the paint weighs 60 tons
-the worlds largest toy distributer in McDonald's
-the most expensive hotel room is in The Penthouse Suite in the Hotel Martinez. The cost per night is about $37,200
-The approximate speed of sound is 761 mph
-its good manners to stick your tongue out at guests in Tibet
-cars get better mileage with cold gasoline
-there is no roman numeral for zero
-fugu is the only fish that can close their eyes
-Louisiana loses about 60 acres a day due to coastal erosion
-the heaviest meteorite to fall on earth: Hoba Meteorite in Namibia (50 tons)
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-In Pocatello, Idaho it's illegal to look unhappy
-sleeping all winter is hibernation, sleeping all summer is estivation
-Thaumatin is 1,600 times sweeter than sugar
-One pond in Brazil can contain a greater variety of fish than every river in Europe
-the word grenade comes from a French word meaning pomegranate
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-There are more American $100 bills in Russia than in the actual US
-Did you know in the 2008 presidential debate Joe the plumber was mentioned 23 times and Iraq was mentioned 7 times
-Google’s name was backrub
-Russian astronauts are allowed to carry guns
-The FBI has a 2000-page file on Albert Einstein
-The longest place name in the US is Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
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P.S. diatoms are so cool!!!
P.S.S. sorry, a few typos
P.S.S.S. I know, this is a little random
I want to keep my enamel. This seems dumb. Tooth enamel is very strong. No way this company can reproduce the strength of the enamel. But I have been proven wrong before. Just ask my wife.
Someone tell my dentist about this stuff! I've got to get a filling next month! And thanks for the random trivia amoeba64. Don't know what that was all about.
i dont really care bout' this. C'mon I have had a root canal at the age of 12
Now this is what patients will like a drill free cavity fix. I wonder though if this equipment will be reserved for the young dentist or will our older traditional family dentist pick up on new technology.
www.smile-lincs.co.uk