Worried about visiting the dentist? Well, painful trips could soon be a thing of the past, thanks to new filling technique for decayed teeth.
In fact, British researchers are currently trialling a pain-free way dealing with rotten teeth that dispenses with the dentist’s drill. It can also be done without anaesthetic jabs and may be more effective than a conventional filling.
The technique, which is, at the moment, only suitable for baby teeth, involves sealing decay in, rather than scraping it out, the Daily Mail reported.
Normally, having a filling involves being given an injection of local anaesthetic. The rotten part of the tooth is then removed using the drill and the hole packed with filling.
Called the Hall Technique, named after Aberdeenshire dentist Norna Hall, no effort is made to remove the decayed part of the tooth. Instead, a metal crown is simply slipped over the tooth and cemented in place. No anaesthetic is needed and, starved of bacteria and oxygen, the decay stops or slows down to such a rate that it doesn’t cause any pain. The crown stays in place until it falls out naturally with the tooth, only in children for now.
Nicola Innes of Dundee University, has carried out two studies into the “child-friendly” technique.
She said: “Sealing in decay is getting a lot of interest but we know that although it has been investigated for more than 30 years and there is a strong body of evidence supporting it, many dentists still view decay as a gangrenous type of disease that needs to be cut out surgically.”
In a two-year trial of 132 children aged between three and ten, children, parents and dentists all preferred the Hall technique. Teeth treated this way also caused fewer problems in the future, say the researchers.
Another National Health Service-funded trial will study almost 1,500 children treated at 50 dental practices in the north of England, inner London, Scotland and Wales.
Prof Jimmy Steele of the National Institute for Health Research, the NHS’s research arm, told ‘The Sunday Times’: “This is challenging what has been conventional wisdom for 150 years.”