Pain-Free, Minimally-Invasive Treatment
At Arctic Dental, Dr. Jarod is dedicated to your child’s comfort, which is why we have invested in advanced laser dental tools. Laser dentistry offers superior precision, faster healing, and a less-invasive procedure that’s not as scary for kids, making laser tools a great choice for pediatric care. Learn more about laser dentistry below, or contact us now for an in-person consultation in Muscatine.
Need a Muscatine Dentist? Request an Appointment for Your Child Today.
Start Online → or Call 563-607-5979
What Is Laser Dentistry?
Laser dentistry uses special, high-wavelength laser light to remove tissue from the mouth and to replace traditional dental tools like dental drills, scalpels, and other such tools.
Soft tissue lasers use a fiber-optic tip, which is heated to an extremely high temperature by the laser light. Upon contacting tissue, it essentially “vaporizes” it, removing the soft tissue right away.
Hard tissue lasers are a bit different. They use a concentrated laser light that is strong enough to cut through the tooth structure without a fiber-optic tip. Note that we only offer soft tissue laser dentistry at Arctic Dental.
What Can A Dental Laser Do?
At Arctic Dental, we use the BioLase Epic X, which is one of the most advanced and highly-regarded diode lasers on the market. Diode lasers are meant for use on soft tissue, so we can use a dental laser to perform almost any treatment on your child’s soft oral tissue, such as the tongue, lips, cheeks, and gums.
We make use of dental lasers in a variety of different situations, including root canal therapy, surgical tooth extractions, canker sore removals, and more.
One of the best applications for dental lasers is frenectomies. A frenectomy is a procedure that involves snipping a child’s tongue or lip ties (tethered oral tissues). Frenectomies release the lip tie or tongue tie, restoring your child’s oral range of motion and preventing feeding issues, speech impediments, and other such complications.
In traditional frenectomies, a scalpel must be used to cut the tongue or lip tie, and sutures are used to ensure your child’s mouth heals properly. But with our BioLase Epic X soft tissue laser, your child can get a frenectomy with no stitches and minimal bleeding.
In fact, numbing is usually not even necessary during a laser frenectomy at Arctic Dental. This all adds up to a faster, more comfortable, and less stressful experience for your child. Best of all, their mouth will heal much more quickly, and you won’t have to come in for a follow up to have their stitches removed.
Benefits of Laser Dentistry
The first benefit of laser dentistry is that it causes almost no pain or discomfort. When the laser contacts your child’s soft tissue, it will immediately “cauterize” and seal the nerve endings, so your child won’t feel any discomfort.
This means that, in many cases, sedation and numbing are not required at all for simple procedures like frenectomies. This saves you time and money, while still ensuring that your child feels safe and comfortable during their procedure.
In the same way, soft tissue lasers also seal up blood vessels, which reduces bleeding, eliminates the need for stitches, and also helps speed up the healing process. The cauterization process also kills bacteria, reducing the risk of complications like infections.
Laser dentistry is also more precise compared to using traditional dental tools, so less healthy tissue will be removed during treatment. This also helps encourage faster healing and recovery.
*Accepting new patients from Muscatine and areas near West Liberty, Columbus Junction, Wapello, Tipton, Wilton, Durant, Stockton, Walcott, Blue Grass.