You have more than likely seen people with diamonds in their teeth, if not in real life then at the very least on TV. From a dental standpoint, something like diamonds drilled into your teeth isn’t the best idea. However, some new scientific innovations may have you putting the “bling” in your body instead of in your teeth.
Innovations Will Make Dental Implants Safer
Recently, scientists from the University of California Los Angeles discovered that diamonds, or at least diamonds on a much smaller scale, could be used to stimulate bone growth, treat oral related diseases or even improve dental implant procedures.
Usually during most bone repair operations the doctors will insert a sponge utilizing invasive surgery to administer a specific group of proteins that help stimulate bone growth. The procedure is both time consuming and costly, and when something like an implant failure occurs, the process must be done over again causing the patient more pain and expense.
That’s not to say that implant surgery of any kind is prone to failure, it’s just simply a fact that some patients’ bodies will reject a foreign substance attached to pre-existing organic tissue and thereby become infected.
Nanodiamonds in Teeth Just a Couple of Years Away
However, now with the innovation of nanodiamonds, the unique surface of these microscopic diamonds bind to the previously mentioned bone growth proteins and can be administered in a non-invasive way such as an oral rinse or at the very worst, an oral injection.
Also bear in mind that these diamonds are not jeweler-grade diamonds but are in fact the much easier to come by, industrial grade. “When applying nanotechnology in dentistry, you want to find materials that make sense,” said Dr. Dean Ho, professor of oral biology and medicine and co-director of the Jerry Weintraub Center for Reconstructive Biotechnology at the UCLA School of Dentistry. “You want a material that’s safe, commonly found or widely made and versatile,” he said. “Nanodiamonds fit that mold.”
Also, these diamonds are microscopic and the entire amount used is still invisible to the naked eye. This process may actually be able to one day help patients with bone loss, a common side effect of cancer treatments like chemotherapy.
So for now, this technique is only in the development, research and trial phase. It could one day be the norm to use diamonds in dental implant procedures. In the meantime, if you’re in need of a dental implant or just a cleaning, come in and make an appointment with Dr. Andrew Hall, Colorado Springs Dentist today.
