Plasma Jets Could Replace Dental Drills 131
Posted
by
kdawson
from the open-wide dept.
from the open-wide dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The first electric dental drill was patented in 1875; modern drills grind the diseased portions of teeth away at up to 500,000 rpm. But dentists have been seeking less invasive ways of wiping out stubborn, tooth-decaying bacteria. Now Live Science reports that bacteria-killing jets of plasma could soon replace the drills used to treat cavities in our teeth. Researchers recently demonstrated that a small, blowtorch-like device emitting a relatively cool beam of purple plasma could eliminate oral bacteria in cavities, leaving more tooth structure intact than a drill does. To test how well 'cold' plasma jets (about 100F or 38C) sterilize tooth material, researchers took slices of dentin from extracted human molars, doused them with bacteria, and torched them with the plasma jet. An inspection via a scanning electron microscope of the damage done to the germs shows bacterial remnants had holes in their cell walls. When the plasma jet fires, it charges oxygen in the surrounding air, creating highly reactive molecules that can break down the bacteria's defenses. Researchers believe the technique could be available to general dentistry in three to five years."
Re:Home use? (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm not sure I'd want to drill my own teeth.
Re:Hard coating? (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, forgot to say, the solution to this exists, it's known as a "console", or a "cell phone". I mean purpose limited machines, where all running code is either heavily sandboxed, or manually vetted by some party.
On general purpose machines such tactics are much less successful, because users actively fight such measures. At some point the user runs into a conflict between that they want to do something that the firewall/permissions/etc don't want to allow. And in such a case the security system is never seen as a good thing, and actively fought, disabled and worked around. Even if what the user wants to do is a seriously bad idea.
It's like trying to protect somebody who insists on that yes, they really want to cut the branch they're sitting on, and if their tool prevents committing suicide they get another that doesn't.
Re:Hard coating? (Score:1, Insightful)
It's nice in that it works to some degree. But it only protects the exposed part of the tooth.
If you're a regular sugary bevarage drinker, all it takes is that one errant bit of popcorn, tortilla chips, or beef jerky between the teeth to let the soda do it's work below the gum line. If you're not a good enough flosser the effect happens much faster. You'll find yourself with the problem of an otherwise normal looking intact tooth - but with a cavity that forms just below the gumline. And who knows what gunk gets trapped there if you can't manage to scrape it out. So the effectiveness of the sealant is not quite as good as you'd think it should be.
In a way, I wish there was a way to re-seed teeth and trigger the horomone process that causes baby-teeth to fall out. (But with defective or damaged adult teeth.) That may still be a few years down the road though. (I suspect this will happen sometime after aging treatment technology gets better, since human teeth haven't really evolved for going much past 40 or 50 with fairly casual maintenance.)
But until then, something that may cause less pain than drilling is a start.
Re:right... (Score:1, Insightful)
This reminds of the following classic AI koan:
---
In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
"What are you doing?" asked Minsky.
"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe."
"Why is the net wired randomly?" asked Minsky.
"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play."
Minsky shut his eyes.
"Why do you close your eyes?" Sussman asked his teacher.
"So the room will be empty."
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
Re:right... (Score:2, Insightful)
We should've had them by now (Score:2, Insightful)
/. had an article about very similar research about 4 years ago [slashdot.org]...