Alzheimer’s drug may help teeth to heal their own cavities!
Dentists can already heal very early tooth decay but this is restricted to teeth where the decay has not yet become large enough to cause a hole. Teeth with more decay than this currently require fillings to remove the damaged part of the tooth and rebuild the missing structure with special plastics.
Dental researchers in Kings College, London, have discovered a way to encourage larger cavities to heal themselves.
I would hope that, once adopted, this new technique could help to reduce the number of fillings and root fillings and thus the need for the constant replacements that these repairs require.
This new, biological, approach to repairing teeth still needs a dentist to clean the tooth cavity and place the drug on a special dissolving sponge then apply a thin layer of composite filling to cover the regenerated dentine and replace the enamel which will not regenerate- so I am afraid the world won’t be rid of us dentists quite yet!
Dr Ashley Davenport BDS MFGDP(UK)
I qualified as a dentist in 1995 and can honestly say that I have been doing a job that I love for the past 20 plus years. Most people who know me well know that dentistry is a passion for me and that if I won the lottery I would still want to have some dentistry in my life. I get huge satisfaction from treating patients and making a difference to ...
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