Your teeth play many roles beyond the ability to eat comfortably. They are involved in how your face is shaped, your ability to speak clearly, and even affect how others perceive you. A steady routine of oral health hygiene that includes brushing, flossing, and using mouthwash help preserve your smile. If tooth decay has set in, you’ll begin seeing an increasing number of health problems related to your teeth. Seeing your dentist twice a year can help offset the advance of decay and repair damage where it occurs.

How Dental Tools Contribute To Your Oral Health

Over the years, many dental tools have been introduced into the industry to help preserve and restore oral health. These tools can address dental concerns effectively and many innovative treatment plans. Together the tools and plans can restore your smile, preserve it against decay, and maintain beauty. The most common dental tools in use today include:

• Digital Scanner – For many years, viewing the oral cavity required holding a light in one hand and a mirror in the other. This meant that it was easy for your dentist to miss certain details and difficult for them to show you what they were seeing. The use of intraoral scanners has changed all that. They can now provide you with a picture-perfect view of your oral cavity in 3D. This allows them to show you the problems they see that need addressing and develop plans more effectively.
• Laser Dentistry – The development of the laser dental drill has done more to revolutionize the dental industry than almost any other invention. It serves to replace the noisy rotary drill with a nearly silent beam of light. Gone is the high-pitched whine, painful procedures, and imprecise work of the rotary drill. Now dental “drilling” is done nearly silently. It has also replaced the scalpel in certain dental procedures such as gingival sculpting and decay removal.
• Digital X-Rays – Digital X-Rays are to imaging technology what the Intraoral scanner is to the mirror and hand-held light. These new x-rays use a fraction of the radiation of previous approaches and produce precision images in stunning 3D. These images can’t get lost like the old x-ray films could and can be transferred to other specialists or dental offices in an instant.
• Digital Smile Design – Gone are the days when deciding on certain cosmetic treatments involved a lot of guesswork about the results. Instead, your dentist can use a digital smile design to reveal what the results of your procedure could be. It also allows you to clearly communicate what you’re hoping to get out of the procedure.

These tools are the ones most frequently used to improve the way that treatment planning and execution occurs.

Speak To Your Dentist About Their Clinic’s Tools

They’ll be happy to tell you about the equipment they use in their practice. Understanding the tools they have at their disposal can tell you a lot about how current they are with dental technology. Just ask them about it during your next appointment!