Dental Tools

Video Transcript

"The nitrous machine is basically almost a cannister device that holds oxygen and the gas of what we know as nitrous oxide. Again nitrous oxide is a gas that we know that when breathed in through your nose that over a couple minutes of exposure time it will actually give you a feeling of wellness and euphoria. Certainly the most important instruments that we use are what we call hand instruments. Hand instruments are basically different metal instruments of different shapes and different points and stuff like that that we use for a broad amount of procedures. It can be something as simple as doing an exam or fixing a filling or maybe doing a cleaning and it can be as broad as doing an extraction or doing a root canal. Those things we basically use all kinds of different variations of hand instruments so there are a lot of different hand instruments that we utilize. Certainly what the dentist is most notorious for is the hand drill which is an object that we use typically to remove cavities, sometimes removal of fillings or to do cosmetic preparations on teeth or even things like removing bone around teeth. Some of the other instruments that we use are we use a lot of X-ray devices to capture different images of the gum and the bone and the supporting teeth. We can use our X-rays to look at the sinuses and all kinds of abnormalities in the gums and the bone. Other things that we can often use are we use lots of different impression materials and a lot of the things in dentistry we do, we require some sort of mold of the patient's mouth so there are various materials depending on what sort of processes you are making of the patient. We use a lot of different impression materials. As far as the pain relievers go there are a lot of different options that we can present to a patient who again has problems dealing with the anxiety or more or less the pain. One version is what we call sedation and sedation is kind of a generic term for describing a way to basically calm the patient down and it can be something as simple as giving them some laughing gas also known as nitrous oxide which can kind of help relieve the nerves of the patient. It also helps with pain control as well. That is kind of the simplest form. There is other forms such as oral sedation which would involve taking a pill before the appointment and that kind of helps create, kind of helps relieve some of that anxiety and can certainly help with pain as well. The other forms of sedation that we could offer to a patient would be IV sedation where an IV is actually started in your arm and medications are actually pushed through your IV and that actually helps put you to sleep. It kind of helps create amnesia, helps with pain control and makes it a very comfortable experience for the patient. Then there is also, which is the broadest one, which is called general anesthesia, which typically isn't seen in the dental environment unless it is associated with an oral surgeon. That is where another type of mask kind of like the laughing gas is put on the patient and they are basically put completely under to the point where they will not hear anything and they cannot hear anything. It is a little more extreme and not very common in the dental scenario but it is available."