Lasers anyone?

[Avrelian]

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How much does it cost to buy a really good equipment, to do cavities&ets with a laser? Is it worth it at all? And more importantly, how much does it cost to hire a good dentist with respective knowledge ? How many dentists prefer not to deal with the business aspect in dentistry in general?

 

[armorshell]

 

[Avrelian]

Pretty much like that. Sorry for a blurry post, but noone in a 100 mile radius here can treat cavities with the laser, while dentists are booked till retirement with work. I thought it would be a nice business project to set up a little fancy-shmancy clinic here. I am interested in business aspect of D-ry in general.

 

[OceanDMD]

The new CO2 lasers have been priced anywhere from 40-60k. They do everything . You can actually anesthetize a pulp with a laser set at a lower setting. Pretty cool stuff. The healing of any soft tissue procedure is excellent as well. Ive also used the waterlase as well. I think it was like 35k.

 

[SuperC]

Certainly soft tissue has it's place in a dental office for procedures like gingival recontouring, however from what I have seen, hard tissue is too slow, can damage pulp, and the smell bothers pts.


That being said, I have little experience with them, so correct me if I a wrong.
-C

 

[DrJeff]

The new CO2 lasers have been priced anywhere from 40-60k. They do everything . You can actually anesthetize a pulp with a laser set at a lower setting. Pretty cool stuff. The healing of any soft tissue procedure is excellent as well. Ive also used the waterlase as well. I think it was like 35k.

The latest and greatest waterlase was going for around $75,000 this spring depending on which bells and whistles and training courses you either bought or got them to throw in. This means that next week out at ADA San Francisco they'll probably have it at "show special" pricing of around $60 to 65K

 

[DrJeff]

Certainly soft tissue has it's place in a dental office for procedures like gingival recontouring, however from what I have seen, hard tissue is too slow, can damage pulp, and the smell bothers pts.


That being said, I have little experience with them, so correct me if I a wrong.
-C

The biggest difference you notice in going from conventional rotary handpieces for prepping a tooth to lasers is hand positioning(or atleast this is what my partner and I found). With the rotary handpiece, when the turbines are spinning, if you have either flutes or diamond grit on that bur it will cut tooth/restorative materials at any angle you make contact with the tooth at (i.e. the tip of the bur, the sides of the bur, anywhere it contacts the tooth). With the laser, the effective cutting area is just at the tip when its held basically at 90 degrees to the tooth structure, so you're not removing any tooth structure on the sides of the filament if it's contacting the tooth. You find yourself adjusting your hand position alot more. The laser, even when you get used to the physics/geometry of the cutting area will allow you to remove tooth structure at maybe 1/2 to 1/3 the rate at which you commonly can with a rotary handpiece. The flipside is that since 90%+ of the time you won't need to anesthetize the patient for any type of tooth preparation you can start right in, so you make up some time there. Plus, you can easily work on both sides of the mouth and be able to check occlussion after without wondering if some interference is presnt but being masked by the anesthesia.

I like both laser and rotary, and use each. The laser is GREAT for pedo patients where often the tradtional anesthesia can be the biggest problem of the visit. The laser is also great for prepping Class V's that go a little sub gingival or even for finishing a deep box on a class II(you'll get both the tooth prepped and the tissue out of the way and hemostasis achieved all at once👍)

The rotary is still my "weapon of choice" for all crown and bridge preps and anytime I'm working on restorative material(either finishing a new restoration or removing an old one).

I basically look at them as having a symbiotic relationship in my practice.