Visiting the dentist can be a bit stressful for kids, especially when it’s a new experience. Luckily, dental technology is advancing all the time, making the experience more comfortable for children.
Many of the advances in dental technology are both improving the quality of care your child receives, and also making the experience itself more comfortable and efficient, too.
This is especially important for children. Oftentimes, those first few experiences in the dentist’s chair will have a big impact on how a child approaches visiting the dentist throughout life.
If those first experiences cause stress and anxiety, it doesn’t set a very good precedent.
With smart, effective dental technology, we can bypass many of the elements of dental care that are most uncomfortable or unnerving for children, or at least significantly reduce discomfort.
A good example of this is the scanning wand that we use to take digital impressions of teeth. These wands are not only quick and easy to use, they also mean there's no longer a need for that gooey alginate impression material that we used to use. This eliminates the gagging, weird flavour, and the general discomfort it can cause children.
Another example of a great advance in dental technology is the hard tissue laser. It makes visiting the dentist a better experience for children in a couple of important ways.
First of all, the fact that the dentist is using a laser on their teeth is a pretty neat and exciting idea for children. Because they think it's cool, they'll be more inclined to submit to dental work without a fuss. But more importantly, lasers allow us to perform most filling procedures on primary teeth with only a topical anesthetic. In turn, this significantly it reduces the need for sedation.