Soft Tissue Lasers In Dentistry

By Sina Reangber, DDS

Have you or anyone you know had a cold sore? Your solution was probably to use some cream to help with the pain and discomfort. What about gum surgery (gingivectomy) or a frenum removal? You may have had surgery to remove tissue and stitches to help with the healing process. Well, its possible that now there is a better solution, the dental laser.

Dental lasers offer great benefits to the dental field to decrease morbidity after surgery as well as reduce the need to have costly anesthetics used during procedures. Due to the cauterization of tissues there is very little bleeding following soft tissue procedures and the risks associated with other procedures may be avoided. For these reasons many dental surgeons are opting to use dental lasers when possible. Both patient and dentists alike are benefitting from this great technological advance in dental surgery.

The soft tissue laser, through interaction of laser light with soft tissue, allows for easier and cleaner dental surgery procedures. For many situations the soft tissue laser has very unique benefits over the other methods and since its invention it has drastically changed many surgical fields. Dental surgeons are not the only professional surgeons that use the soft tissue laser; the technology is widely used across many medical professions and has a variety of applications to make complicated surgery much cleanlier and safer for the doctors using them and their patients.

A soft tissue laser works by using a highly focused laser beam to vaporize the soft tissue that contains high water content. One of the most amazing abilities of the soft tissue laser is its ability to cauterize small blood vessels and lymphatics and decrease post-operative swelling. The soft tissue laser has the added effect of natural sterilization as it evaporates bacteria, viruses and fungi, leading to a large decrease in local infections after surgery. Not only does the laser cauterize the incisions and vaporize bacteria and infection, it also decreases post-operative pain because it seals the nerve endings.

Some examples of procedures a soft tissue laser can be used for are frenectomy, fibroma removal, herpetic lesions and aphatous ulcers, gingivectomies, and laser assisted periodontal therapy.

The soft tissue laser has revolutionized a variety of surgeries making painful and uncomfortable post-operative healing much more bearable for the patients and the soft tissue laser is now used in a number of applications such as neurosurgery, general surgery and, of course, dental surgeries.