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caption52 gm0413denp52.pdf Page 52 13/02/2013, 5:11:01 PM

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caption53 goodhealth. The latest advances in dental technology mean the tooth fairy’s days are numbered, writes Beverley Hadgraft. And the best thing is, it won’t hurt a bit! D ental technology is moving ahead in leaps and bounds. Some of the more amazing innovations on the horizon include creams that reverse decay, magic wands that allow dentists to check your teeth from another location and toothbrushes that dob you in if you don’t clean thoroughly enough. If they all sound a little futuristic, read on. dobber Oral-B already has an electric toothbrush with a pressure sensor and a timer to tell you if you’ve brushed your pearly whites for long enough and if you’re brushing them too hard. If that’s not enough to keep you accountable, a US company is marketing a Bluetooth-enabled brush that monitors your oral hygiene habits, records them on a smartphone app, then makes them available to your dentist or hygienist. “Realistically, we’ll get to the point where the movements of the brush will be linked into a device that tells you if you’ve missed areas,” says Dr Nathan Cochrane, senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne’s Dental School. smile about impression of your teeth, then spend three weeks with a temporary crown before heading back to have the finished item put in place. Instead, laser scanners will create 3D images to help dentists fit both crowns and braces – indeed, it’s already happening in some surgeries. Some systems even allow dentists to scan the tooth, mill up the crown in a machine – which colour matches your tooth to the crown – in the surgery and pop it into the mouth all in one session. As laser scanners continue to improve, Cochrane also envisages them becoming so advanced they’ll also be able to monitor the tiniest surface loss of a patient’s teeth. That will mean dentists can pick up very subtle changes occurring between check-ups. Something

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caption54 Associate Professor Rodrigo Marino and his team at Melbourne Dental School are working on teledentistry, the use of computer technology and the internet for dental care and consultation. This process will involve using an intraoral 3D scanner, a wand-like camera, to stream video from inside a patient’s mouth. This can then be relayed to dental specialists to help with the diagnosis. The images are so good that dentists can see the teeth more clearly than they would if they were doing a manual inspection. So far, the scanner has been trialled in residential nursing homes and a children’s hospital, which means children who live in remote areas don’t have to travel for hours or even days for a 20-minute appointment. In the future it could also be used in remote clinics. vibrations These days it’s not only teens who wear braces – adults also often need them to correct a bite later in life. Braces work on connective tissues, loosening teeth then stimulating the growth of new bone to support those teeth in their new position. The process is effective but costly and time-consuming – it takes an average of two years. Now a new device, AcceleDent, claims to speed up treatment time by vibrating the teeth very gently. The makers say that using AcceleDent for 20 minutes a day can cut the time needed in braces by a good 40 per cent. Forget the Teeth contain a nerve and blood vessels called the dental pulp and this contains stem cells which can potentially be used to replace diseased and damaged tissues in your body without fear of rejection. UK scientist Professor Paul Sharpe has been using stem cells to grow teeth in animals and it is hoped that within the next 30 years or so there will be no need for implants, bridges or dentures, as we’ll grow our own teeth from a tooth bud of stem cells nurtured in a test tube then placed into an incision in the gum. Dental stem cells have already been successfully us

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captionGME 1303_ L i n d gm0413denp55.pdf Page 55 20/02/2013, 10:36:55 AM e ma n s _ T P V _ r e v i s