How New Tech In the Dental Office Benefits You

By Judy Yu, DMD, MBA

Cosmetic Dental FX

. https://www.dentalfxmd.com/

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How New Tech In the Dental Office Benefits You

The iTero Element 5D is a wand-shaped digital scanner that features an intraoral camera. The wand can be moved around the inside of a patient’s mouth to essentially create five-dimensional impressions of your teeth. This makes your dentist’s job easier when treating you, but, what exactly does this mean for you?

This state-of-the-art diagnostic tool is used for a number of purposes, including finding cavities, to enhance Invisalign procedures, and to replace traditional dental impressions.

Finding Cavities Between Teeth

Cavities between teeth are often invisible to the naked eye, and dentists typically rely on bitewing X-rays to find them.

The iTero features an infrared camera that allows your dentist to identify cavities between teeth without an X-ray. So if your dentist has the iTero they can use traditional X-rays less frequently. As a result, patients can have a more comfortable experience, and exposure to radiation from X-ray technology is minimized.

Enhancing the Invisalign Procedure

The iTero can be used to simulate Invisalign treatment, allowing a patient to see what his or her smile would look like after treatment is completed.

Replacing Traditional Dental Impressions

Reducing how often traditional dental impressions need to be taken is one of the most notable benefits of this new dental technology.

For traditional dental impressions, dentists place impression material into a tray, and the patient must bite down into it for about five minutes. This can be challenging for patients. 

Taking traditional impressions is not only time-consuming, but they are goopy and may not taste pleasant, making patients uncomfortable when they have to hold the trays in place for a period of time.

With the digital scanner, the dentist can obtain a digital impression without using the traditional method, and the scanner may even provide better results since it is more accurate than traditional impressions. There can be more distortions with traditional impressions.

This digital tool can also be used to create bite guards for athletes or TMJ patients, as well as to track changes in a patient’s teeth over time.

 Another benefit is that digital impressions also provide your dentist with the ability to compare scans from different time periods. They can overlay a present-day scan with one from the past to see how things have changed over time.