subject: The Advent Of Dental Sensors [print this page] While dental sensors have been around for a few years now, I see no reason not to celebrate the advent of dental sensors. After all, they replace x-ray film. If anyone remembers taking x-rays with dental film, then you will remember that they were poky, prone to slipping, and incapable of delivering the same detail as can be achieved with digital dental radiography. The lack of detail meant that you might have to take more than one image to get the necessary detail to give the dentist what he or she needs to provide a quality dental procedure. Digital dental radiography is a huge step in a positive direction when it comes to dentistry.
Dentistry has been around for many, many years. In its most basic form, dentistry was really nothing more than pulling teeth once they began to cause problems. In these early days, little attention, and by little attention, I mean no attention was spared for what was going on beneath the gums. Since the dentist had no way of discerning what might be happening beneath a patient's gums, he focused on taking care of issues on the surface. The tools and methods used in these early days were primitive.
As technology improved, dentistry benefited from the advent of new equipment to use to inform dental decisions. X-rays were an important breakthrough. For the first time, dentists could get an idea of what was happening beneath the gums. Knowing that a new tooth was not growing in right could tell the dentist that a baby tooth might have to be pulled. X-rays also gave a way for a dentist to determine if he had drilled out enough of a patient's root. X-rays allowed dentist to improve the quality of the procedures they performed. However, as much improvement as x-rays allowed, they had limitations.
It used to be that x-rays had to be captured with specially prepared dental film. This dental film had to be placed in cardboard frames to protect it from a patient's teeth and to provide a way to position the x-ray properly. These cardboard frames had pokey edges that could irritate a patient's gums and cheeks. Because of this pokiness, it was not uncommon for a patient to try to shift the dental frame in his or her mouth in order to relieve some of the irritation. Whenever an x-ray failed to show what it needed to, the dentist had to throw away the film and start over. The x-ray film was wasted. Finally, as was mentioned before, images taken with x-ray film do not provide the same detail that can be captured with digital radiography.
Dental sensors improve on the previous x-ray technology. They replace dental film with a digital sensor encased in a hard plastic covering. There are no pokey edges to irritate a patient's teeth. Thus, there is less to irritate a patient's mouth and less need for shifting. A dental sensor connects with a cable directly to a computer, so there is no worry about wasting x-ray film. Finally, dental sensors provide better image quality than x-ray film ever could. Dental sensors are easier to use and give better quality. It is easy to see why they have replaced x-ray film.
Dentists need high quality images in order to provide the best dental help to their patients. Without a highly detailed x-ray, dentists would not have a good idea of what was happening beneath the gums. Without this knowledge dentistry would take a huge step back into the primitive methods used in the past. Let's just be glad that we have the technology we have.
