TIME was when the preferred material for filling superficial dental cavities was gold. Often, it still is, although cheaper materials are frequently used instead. But, for the deepest sort of filling, root-canal treatment, another substance familiar from the jeweller’s shop is about to join the dentists’ armamentarium—diamond.
Root-canal fillings reach, as their name suggests, right to the bottom of a tooth. They are needed when bacterial infection has penetrated both a tooth’s protective enamel and the somewhat softer dentine layer that underlies this, and has got into the nutrient-rich, nerve-containing pulp in a tooth’s centre. Unfortunately, such fillings are complex, painful and tricky to pull off—and it is common for the infection to return, either because the void left when the pulp has been removed has not been cleared properly by the dentist performing the operation or because gutta percha, the gum usually used to fill that void, does not create a good enough seal, permitting bacteria to creep back in. The idea of changing this by mixing diamonds into the gutta percha is the...Continue reading
Source: Science and technology http://ift.tt/1Wl5PCC
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