Upcoming Procedures and Technology in Dentistry Part 1

Bhalla Dental Clinic has repeatedly adopted the use of specialized dental equipment rarely accessible elsewhere in India for cosmetic dentistry and surgical procedures. I personally have also encouraged my peers to embrace the internet and social media engagement with the dental community locally. Therefore, I am frequently asked by students, patients and other dentists alike to speculate on technologies that will be helpful in dentistry in the near future.

Dental Clinic Management Software: As is common and predictable with the medical industry in our country, the use of medical and hospital management softwareonly stands to increase. Software for dental transcription and record keeping has already been developed. Now these will be further enhanced for patient database management, dental appointment scheduling , treatment records and even financial or dental insurance records of patients. With doctors and their aides becoming more proficient in the use of iPads and smart phones, the adoption of digital recording and information dissemination will accelerate.

Dental Lasers: Lasers are used in nearly all medical fields and dentistry is no exception. New uses of lasers are being found nearly everyday in dental surgery, notably in soft oral tissue surgery and jaw tissue preparation. Lasers are used by Bhalla Dental Clinic predominantly in orthodontics. We foresee the development of efficient tooth drills that can make treatments such as fillings, caps and dental crowns painless and accurate. Lasers can also speed up precise jaw bone modeling, gum surgery or smile correction.

Tooth DNA: DNA is another upcoming area which has vast potential in the next 10 years or so. Prognosis and diagnosis of tooth ailments with DNA techniques will prevent a lot of pain in the general population, particularly for patients with diabetes, high blood pressure or cardiac risks. There is even talk of systems under development that will enable us to replace patients’ teeth with new teeth grown in the laboratory with the patient’s own DNA! The combined use of nanotechnology and lasers in oral surgery will enable dentists to make treatment of mouth cancer less traumatic and more targeted and successful.

For want of time, I shall have to divide this post into two parts… Please check back for the second one.