So what was new at the 2010 ADA Session in Orlando?- CarieScan Pro

 As usual there were some interesting products and events taking place. The biggest news was Philips the makers of Sonicare bought Discus Dental. What this means to wet gloved dentist will remain to be seen but for now things will be business as usual for both companies and their products.

Over the next few days I will be discussing some new and updated products that I got to see and play with during the 3 days of exhibits.

 

So today lets look at CarieScan Pro. that comes to us from Scotland and is being sold by Patterson Dental.  It is a simple to use caries detection device that is simple to use and minimizes false positives.  CarieScan Pro uses AC impedance to quantify dental caries.  Don’t worry, as the current is so low that the patient does not feel it.

 The tooth is air dried and the disposable tip is placed onto the tooth. Don’t worry there are prompts to guide you through the process. The CarieScan Pro provides a qualitative value based directly on the disease state, rather than the indirect optical properties of the tooth or surrogate markers such as bacterial breakdown products.  The device beeps when the measurement is complete and a number is displayed on the LCD screen.  It looks like an interesting caries detection device. The only potential downside it that the disposable tips cost $2.00 a piece. I forgot to write down the cost but I believe it was in the $3-4 thousand dollar range.