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Application of Lasers in Dentistry.

Neha Sharma, Cecil Williams, Prabhakar Angadi, and Honey Jethlia

Today lasers technology is influencing our life in many ways. Its advancements in the field of medicine and dentistry are playing a major role in patient care and wellbeing. Lasers are being used for general surgical procedures since long time. It was introduced in dental treatment primarily to overcome the problems due to conventional procedures. Interaction of lasers to soft tissue allow bloodless surgery, least post-operative pain and scarring; since the laser incision is more broad and irregular so it blends better with the surrounding tissue while healing. Lasers for hard tissues encourage efficient diagnosis of caries and improve the resistance of dental enamel to caries, etching of enamel, cavity preparations, photopolymerization of composite resin and sterilization of the root canal system. Lasers are not so effective for removing old restorations and while removing enamel or crown preparation, laser is not as fast as rotary bur. Research has shown that near infrared (NIR) wavelengths are ideally suited for numerous soft tissue procedures due to their high absorption in hemoglobin. This fact gives NIR laser the ability to precisely and efficiently cut, coagulate, ablate or vaporize the target tissue. This review article focuses on the application of laser in dental hard and soft tissue procedures.