Abstract
n recent years, a remarkable change has occurred in the concept of the treatment of dental caries, which is one of the two major diseases in dentistry, because of the progress of cariology and the use of laser.
Laser irradiation onto the tooth surface in the early stages of caries shows effects such as sterilization of oral micro-organisms, increase of acid resistivity of the tooth, incresae of fluoride uptake, and remineralization of caries lesion, and enables the minimal invasive treatment of hard tissue surrounding of the affected tooth through selective evaporation by laser irradiation. Thus, the laser has an important role for the maximal protection of tooth structure against caries invasion. In order to evaluate the laser effects, we used the DIAGNOdent instrument (Ka Vo Co. Biberach, Germany) which can numerically evaluate the organic substances with fluorescence in decayed lesions. The high peak pulse type (Power Pulse) Nd: YAG laser (SLT japan Co., Tokyo) was used for caries treatment upon approximately 800 teeth of patients with incipient and also advanced caries. The affected and softened hard tissue of the lesion was easily removed by means of shrinkage and evaporation after the laser irradiation.
The treated area was then remineralized with topical application of fluoride. This procedure was repeated until the infected lesion was completely removed. As this treatment was restricted only to the infected lesions, dental pulp did not suffer from inflammation, and pulpectomy was prevented.
Although ordinary drilling devices for cutting teeth irreversibly removed the tooth structure, the laser treatment demonstrated promising ability in maintaining oral health without destroying the tooth structure.
