Dental+Drills

=Dental Drills= __**Abstract**__ Dentistry has been a field of healthcare that has been around for thousands of years. Evidence of dental drilling and extractions have been seen in skulls from the ancient civilizations such as the Egyptians and Mayans. Most of the time “treating” a dental problem in these ancient times was more about alleviating the pain rather than curing it. What took dentistry from simply extracting a decaying tooth to fixing and treating it, was the invention of the dental drill or dental hand piece. With this new device bacterial decay was drilled out of the tooth so that the tooth could be salvaged and gums healed. The earliest drills were hand spun which meant that they could only spin up to speeds of 15 revolutions per minute. As the science of dentistry was being researched and developed, so was the technology of the drills. In 1728, Pierre Fauchard, or the Father of Modern Dentistry, was one of the first dentists to really improve the hand spun drills. Past innovations of dental drills incorporated the power of man, machine and energy to make the dental drills more efficient. This meant that they went from spinning just 15 revolutions per minute to much, much faster speeds. This allowed dentists to better remove decay from teeth and salvage them instead of just extracting them. The birth of new, faster, and better hand pieces still goes on today and will probably never stop. Researchers will always be coming out with a drill that outshines the ones from the past. =**Outline**.= I. History II. Early Dental Drills III. Electricity and First Drill Revolution IV. Second Drill Revolution V. Important Dental Inventors VI. Impact of Modern Drills on Dentistry

=History= History will tell you that dentistry is not a new health care practice. Evidence of dental procedures have been discovered in ancient skulls excavated in archeological digs in places such a Egypt and in Mayan territories. These skulls exhibited the drilling and extraction of teeth. Even though this is considered to be dental practices, these procedures were most likely not performed by anyone who had gone to school for dentistry. These were most likely people who were skilled in other trades. Some scientists and historians believed that in some tribes of people bead makers were the ones called to drill out a painful tooth. The first dental drill is believed to have come around 7000 B.C. These drills were called bow drills and were originally used to make beads. Bead makers would spin these drills by hand to remove the inside of the decaying tooth. Since these drills were hand spun drilling was very tedious for the bead maker and painful and long for the patient. As time moved on and dentistry became a field of study, drills were being constantly re-invented. With the addition of electricity probably being the most important

=Early Dental Drills= As previously stated the Bow Drill was the first ever tool used to treat an ailing patient of a decaying tooth. There would not be a significant change to the dental drill for thousands of years. Not until the 1700 was there any reall improvement to the hand-spun drill. In 1790 a mechanical drill made its appearence in the field of dentistry. These drills were now powered by foot-pedals just like an antique sewing machine, hand cranks, or clockworks. This slightly alleviated the dentist of the arduous task of drilling out a tooth by just spinning the drill manually. Even though this was considered a great invention at the time, these machanical drills were often times very noisy and were not very fast. These drills only spun about 15 revolurions per minute. This meant that procadures still took a long time which was tiring for the dentist and very uncomfortable for the patient. Some procedures took days to complete with the mechanical drills. It wasn't until the late 1800s, with the invention of electricity, did dentist toy around with the idea of electrical drills causing a revolution in the field of dentistry.

=Electricity and the First Drill Revolution= The first electric dental engine which powered the first electric dental drill was invented in the 1870s. One dentist, in particular, who had a hand in this was a dentist by the name of Dr. George F. Green. These electrical drills could now spin at much faster speeds which, in turn, was more comfortable for the dentist and somewhat more comfortable for that patient considering that no matter how fast the drill spins it will always be uncomfortable to them. The old mechanical drills spinning at 15 revolutions per minute were, at the time, laughable compared to the 3000 revolutions per minute the electrical drills of the early 1900s. This brought in a new wave to inspiration to improve the performance of dental drills in many dental practices. With the promise of quicker procedures and less time in the dentist chair to wary patients, many dentists sought for ways in which they could make the electric drill faster and more efficient.

=Second Drill Revolution= Even with new inventions of the electric dental drill, it wasn't until the 1950s and 1960s that another great improvement hit the dentistry field. This revolution occurred with the addition of air turbine to electrical drills. These are the drills that are used in dentistry today. Modern drills have a few minor additions such as: tiny lights on the end of the drill, different angling of the drill head etc., but the drills used in dental offices today are still electric and still use air turbine to spin them. With the combination of electricity and air turbine, drills today can reach speeds up to 800,000 revolutions per minute, which heavily surpass even the electrical drills of the 1800s.

=Important Dental Inventors= Its hard to think where dentistry would be today if no one thought to add mechanics, electricity, or air turbine to dental drills and we were still getting our teeth drilled on by a hand spun Bow Drill. Thankfully there were individuals who knew that this tool could always be improved upon. Many of those individuals, inventors, were dentists themselves looking to better their profession and improve their practice, Some dentists even believe that its natural for dentists to be inventing everyday, always trying to make a procedure go more smoothly or make the patient more comfortable with the procedure. Some of the more important dental inventors through out history have been John Greenwood who was George Washington's dentist in 1970. Greenwood was the first inventor of the Dental Foot Engine, using his mother's sewing machine foot pedal. Then there was John Lewis in 1838 who invented the first hand cranked drill. George Fellows Harrington in 1864 who invented the noisy clockwork drill and the inventor who brought the most to the dental drill George F. Green who was the one who added electricity.

=Impact of Modern Drills on Dentistry= The major advantage of the modern electrical dental drill is the increase in speed. The faster speeds allows dentists to cut and drill a tooth more efficiently. This ensures that the dentist has and can remove all of the decay plaguing a tooth so that extraction of a tooth is preventable. It also allows dentists the ability to shave down a tooth better in order to place a crown, bridge or preform a root canal. Faster drills also cut down the procedure time which means that the dentist isn't working in a patients mouth for hours or possibly days for one procedure. It also make procedures more comfortable for that patient. Since procedure time is cut in half the patient is able to see that the problem tooth is fixed without sitting in the dentist's chair with their mouth open for hours at a time.

All innovation in dentistry, not just the dental drill, is to improve efficiency and to ensure the happiness and comfort of the dentist as well as the patient.

//Dental Drill//. (2009, April 13). Retrieved April 16, 2009, from Wikepedia, the free encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_drill Dr. Meng K Syn, D. (2005). //A Little History About Dentistry//. Retrieved April 14, 2009, from Almaden Dental Associates: http://www.carabelli.com/pages/patient_library/history.htm Wynbrandt, J. (2000). //The Excruciating History of Dentistry.// Macmillan. Allison DiMatteo, B. M. (2009). Dental Inventors & the Greatest Innovations In Dental History. //Inside Dentistry//, 88-94.
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