Piezosurgery for Minimally Invasive Surgery

Tooth Extraction without the Trauma? Yes, it's Possible!

Guest Post by Kolleen Shallcross

Emergency dental procedure. The words strike fear into just about everyone. I’d been having trouble with a tooth, and as many of us do, hoped it would magically resolve itself. I was busy with work and life and tried to ignore it, but when it began hurting more, oozing pus and swelling, I resigned myself to the appointment.

I headed to Dr. Golden’s office, hoping that she could fix whatever was wrong without too much pain. My heart was thumping, but as I relaxed into the chair and looked up at the wall mural, it slowed down a little. It’s a painting of a smiling blonde lady holding an armful of roses, surrounded by butterflies, sunflowers and daisies. In the background are green hills with a cheerful sunrise and a rainbow, and I was momentarily distracted, wondering if she might be Mother Nature, reassuring me that the world is a wonderful, healing place. Maybe she was the artist’s vision of Dr. Golden herself, always smiling and ready to make you feel at ease. My reverie was interrupted with the news that although I did come in before the bone and an adjacent implant were damaged, the tooth would have to be extracted. Ouch.

Dr. Golden reassured me that she had instrumentation that would make this trauma-free. I felt some cautious optimism as she explained about Piezosurgery. In a nutshell, piezoelectricity uses an electric charge to build pressure and ultrasonic frequency to cut through bone in a minimally invasive way. Piezosurgery is used in all sorts of bone surgeries, but has found a niche in the dental world for extractions, crown lengthening, tissue removal, scaling, and osteotomies/osteoplasty (when bone needs to be removed or replaced).

In her holistic dental practice, Dr. Golden’s number one goal is biocompatibility, ensuring that every treatment is nontoxic and safe for your whole body. She also knows that the health of your mouth connects to your overall health, as well as the reverse. She explained that Piezosurgery has been proven to result in fewer proinflammatory cytokines as well as earlier increases in BMP levels in patients than when dentists use traditional drilling. BMP is a patient’s basic metabolic panel, and while cytokines are proteins in our body that promote healing responses, proinflammatory cytokines, as the name suggests, actually boost inflammation responses and can cause progress in a disease. I was starting to have hope that this would be okay after all.

She explained that the device circles between the tooth and gum and uses saline to separate the tooth. No tugging pliers, no grisly wrenching. After she made sure I understood and was on board with the procedure, she got started.

I am now free of that infected tooth, and I can tell you I couldn’t be more pleased. The procedure was quick, and with the Piezosurgery technique, the noise and vibration of drilling were absent. The psychological effect of that is great all by itself, but when you add in that I was as comfortable as having a tooth extraction allows and the fact that pain and swelling were minimal, I can’t stop telling people to go see Dr. Golden. Your mouth will thank you!