As Darth Vader knows, a laser is a valuable aid in taking out your enemies.
It turns out our Alma, MI dentist Dr. Thomas J. McDonald has a little something in common with the “Star Wars” bad guy. Like the Sith Lord, Dr. McDonald frequently arms himself with a laser on the job. Unlike Vader, though, he uses his laser for good, not evil.
Dr. McDonald uses his laser in the battle against tooth decay, every dentist’s sworn enemy. He uses the laser, a high-tech dental tool called DIAGNOdent, during your family’s dental exams.
If you want to experience our use of the latest dental technology, including DIAGNOdent, call Mid-Michigan Dental Excellence at 989-796-4848. Or make an appointment …show more content…
Fluoride makes the surface of your family’s teeth harder and more resistant to tooth decay. That’s a good thing, but it makes it tough to find cavities in their early stages when they are easiest to treat.
That’s because cavities that used to begin on those hard surfaces are now more often found in a softer layer of your teeth called dentin, inside all of those “valleys” on the chewing surfaces of your teeth.
Early Detection of Tooth Decay Is Important
Tooth decay does its damage from the inside out. The outside surface of your teeth still appears healthy. So we likely won’t find this kind of decay until it shows up on your X-rays or until we can actually see discoloration through the enamel. By then, the decay has already done a fair amount of damage.
We’ve talked about the importance of early detection on this blog before, most recently in our post about periodontal disease. It is important to detect tooth decay in its earliest stages, when a simple tooth filling can repair the dental damage.
If decay advances you may: need a root canal, if decay gets to the pulp inside your tooth and becomes infected need a dental crown to restore your tooth if it is damaged badly enough
Or, worst-case scenario, need a tooth extraction
How Does DIAGNOdent