Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 11
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1
(
Contd
)
Treatments
Comments
5 Dental durability
and cosmetics
Tooth durability and appearance may be
improved by replacing upper enamel layers with
covalently-bonded artiicial materials such as
sapphire or diamond which have 20-100 times
the hardness and failure strength of natural
enamel or contemporary ceramic veneers and
good biocompatibility. Like enamel, sapphire
is somewhat susceptible to acid corrosion,
but sapphire can be manufactured in virtually
any color of the rainbow, offering interesting
cosmetic possibilities (e.g., iridescence) as
alternatives to standard whitening and sealant
procedures.
6 Nanorobotic
dentifrice
(dentifrobots)
Effective prevention has reduced caries in
children and a caries vaccine may soon be
available, but a subocclusal-dwelling nano-
robotic dentifrice delivered by mouthwash
or toothpaste could patrol all supragingival
and subgingival surfaces at least once a day,
metabolizing trapped organic matter into
harmless and odorless vapors and performing
continuous calculus debridement. These
invisibly small (1-10 micron) dentifrobots,
perhaps numbering 103-105 nanodevices per
oral cavity and crawling at 1-10 microns/sec,
might have the mobility of tooth amoebas
but would be inexpensive purely mechanical
devices that would safely deactivate themselves
if swallowed and would be programmed with
strict occlusal avoidance protocols. Properly
conigured dentifrobots could identify and
destroy pathogenic bacteria residing in the
plaque and elsewhere, while allowing the ~500
species of harmless oral microlora to lourish
in a healthy ecosystem. Dentifrobots would also
provide a continuous barrier to halitosis, since
bacterial putrefaction is the central metabolic
process involved in oral malodor. With this kind
of daily dental care available from an early age,
conventional tooth decay and gum disease will
disappear into the annals of medical history.
