The normal history of a restored tooth is as follows: you receive a silver filling when the tooth first gets decayed.  Since 80% of what we do in dentistry is maintaining, redoing and updating what has already been done the tooth gets fixed again only this time with a larger filling - leaving the tooth in a weaker condition.  Eventually it is crowned before it breaks or if you are not so lucky after it fractures.  

Microdental Air Abrasion offers a better way. Once the tooth is restored and strengthened with the new flowable, bondable tooth colored restorations the need for a future crown will be lessened, your costs will be less and your dental visits easier.  Click here to see studies on the true cost of a filling.  Click here to see information on early decay detection with a laser.

Traditional dental examinations to detect early decay are only 80% accurate.  Since the older silver fillings required a large opening in the tooth - we typically watched these areas until they became large enough to do --- that is to say until the cure (the silver filling) was less invasive than the decay. 

Then dentistry created the  "PREVENTIVE RESTORATION" - a small tooth colored filling that was prepared with a dental drill. This was a step in the right direction - but the dental drill left a big opening in the tooth and required you to be made numb. Air abrasion now allows us to prepare the smallest opening in the tooth, in some instances with out being numb at an earlier more preventable stage.  It is similar to the orhtopaedic surgeon being able to treat knees that they were once left undone at an earlier stage.   Air abrasion allows us to treat the 20% that we can't accurately diagnose with x-rays and traditional dental exams before they have a chance to get any larger.   The drill is replaced with a silent device that literally blows the cavity away from the tooth.  Patient's view of having dental work done is changing.  It is a fantastic device for children or anyone with anxiety over dental procedures.    Air Abrasion and Micro dentistry clearly provides new solutions to old problems with outstanding benefits.  The pictures above tell the story. 

When a Little Hole Becomes a $2,000 Money Pit

 New data shows that, over a person’s lifetime, a single, initial cavity has serious economic consequences.  That’s the conclusion of a new report from the Data and Analysis Center (DAC), the nation’s largest claims-based dental health data warehouse, which found that the average cost to maintain a restored cavity in the molar of a 10-year old reaches $2,187 by the time he or she is 79.   If a person has several cavities, the cost explodes accordingly.

“There are currently no permanent restorative materials available to treat cavities, so the life-time cost of maintaining teeth that have been treated for decay far outpaces any out-of-pocket costs you might spend to prevent decay in the first place,”  said Max Anderson, DDS, a national oral health advisor for Delta Dental Plans Association.  

For patients with dental benefits, there is often no out-of-pocket cost for preventive services such as regular examination.  Even if a patient has no co-payment for preventive services, the data clearly shows an investment in prevention is a bargain compared with the ongoing cost of restoration.  

Following an analysis of more than 77 million claims submitted within the Delta Dental System, the DAC data indicated that over a lifetime, it costs-in 2003 dollars-$1,788 to maintain a restoration in an anterior tooth and $2,108 to maintain one in a premolar.  On average, patients who develop cavities in their molars between ages 7 and 12 require more than $1,000 in services by age 40 to maintain each restoration.  By age 79, these patients require an average of $2,187 per initial cavity.  That’s because fillings wear out over time and have to be replaced.  In some cases, failed fillings have to be replaced with crowns, which are more expensive.  The lifetime cost of a cavity also increases when a tooth requires endodontic treatment or extraction and replacement with a prosthetic tooth.  

“The conclusion is, over a lifetime, just one cavity is expensive; two or more drive expenses well above the lifetime cost of preventive care,” said Dr. Anderson.  “When a patient works with his or her dentist, cavities are almost entirely preventable.  We hope this illustration provides another incentive for people to maintain their oral health.”  

The Data Analysis Center is an investor-owned, for-profit company of dental science experts and business analysts who manage the country’s most extensive claims-based dental health data warehouse.  It evaluates treatment outcomes based on evidence from millions of dental insurance claims submitted from every state in the nation.  

Delta Dental Plans Association, based in Oak Brook , Ill , is a national network of independent not-for-profit dental service corporations specializing in providing dental benefits programs to 45 million Americans in more than 76,000 employee groups throughout the country.

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