NEW METHOD

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 155, 23 February 1932, Page 2

NEW METHOD

GERMAN DENTAL DISCOVERY MAY DO AWAY WITH DRILL. USE OF ANAESTHETICS. The deritist's drill may be abolished and declay in teeth will simply melt away, reports from Germany say. By enclosing the tooth in a case, except for the part which needs treatmept, and placing a few drops of a certain acid in the decay, the decayed portion can be removed in a few minutes without any pain to the patient. Dentists have "little or no knowledge at present of the new process. When interviewed, members of the profession stated that even if it were satisfactory, the dentist would still have to use the drill to shape the cavity to hold the filling. Actually many dentists were now using painless stopping methods, generally by using a local anaesthetic. The new process, described in* a German dental journal, is said to be the perfection of a method which has been experimented with for about five years. After the acid has been applied to the tooth and the decay lifted out, the tooth can be filled again within 24 hours. "The. difficulty of filling teeth is not in removing the decay, but in shaping the cavity to .hold the filling that is .to take its place," one dentist said. "From the- description of the new process it seems that the drill would. still have to be used in shaping up the walls of the cavity and shaping out the parts to hold the filling. "It would also be necessary to have a positive method of preventing the acid from attacking the nerve of the tooth. That is the great danger of all these experiments to do away with the drill, because a tooth is never the same after the nerve is gone, and often the death of the nerve does not become apparent for some time."

There is at present in use by many dentists a paste which is placed over the decayed part of the tooth and sealed for 24 to 28 hours, one dentist explained. When unsealed it enables the taking away of the decay without pain, but there is generally a danger that the nerve of the tooth may be injured. . | Heat Causes Pain. Actually it is the heat set up by the friction of the drill that causes the pain in having a tooth stopped, the reporter was told. The nerve of the tooth grows up through the bottom of it and from the centre tiny tubulars radiate through the tooth. There is no feeling when the drill is going through the enamel that encases the tooth, but its action upon the tiny tubulars, which it kills, produces an irritation which extends down through the nerve of the tooth. It is possible, however, to have painless stoppings, one dentist said, by the use of local anaesthetics, just as for extractions. This involved a knowledge of the position of the nerve of the face, but that was part and parcel of the dentist's stock-in-trade. An injection would not "take" properly, however, unless the nc tj c entres were reached with the injectmg needle. Some people had a pre.judice against injections, but the method was safe and satisfactory. It was most suitable for dealing with several decayed teeth at once. If the patient had three- decayed teeth together an injection could be given and the drilling done for the whole three in next to no time. The speaker had drilled six teeth in a row for one male patient recently.