For the first time a Robot which has been designed and programmed to remove Wisdom has performed a Wisdom tooth removal procedure on a live patient in a dental chair. This operation took place in a local clinic in Tokyo last Tuesday. The patient who participated for the surgery or we must say experiment was a 55 year old local man.
The Robot which performed the procedure has been named as “Alla Dente” and one of the developers of the program Ishaki Morakuni said “We had great luck with Alla Dente” and also went on to say that this new program will be made into large scale and the group are planning to substitute almost 30% of Japanese Dentists with Robots to perform such delicate procedures in Dental Clinics.
The team has said that there were no complications in the operation and the patient did not suffer any major inconveniences. It is not clear about the exact nature of the operation which took place, the type of Wisdom tooth extraction was it surgical or non-surgical, if it was impacted or not and pre and post-operative care was taken care of by the dentist or the robot itself.
Ishaki Morakuni also went on to say ”We knew the software is perfect, we knew Alla Dente has all the capabilities to maintain such a delicate mission but from this, to completing a successful wisdom tooth removal… I mean, there were moments I felt pity for that man on the dentist chair. It’s good to know that our experiment had a happy end, knowing from previous tests that much more blood could have been spilled there.”
Meanwhile there are protests from the Dental fraternity about the spread of this type of robots in the dental field and how it will be affecting the society and what measures will the robot be able to take in case of any emergencies or problems faced during the procedure. There are groups in France who are taking measures to make sure that these Robots don’t make it to the real clinics. “This is our job of which we’re very proud,” said a spokesman of the group. “We don’t like the idea of them (robots – O.N.) coming and taking our place. People must understand that even if robots can pull put an aching tooth, they will not be there to tell us jokes or calm us down when blood is pouring down like a river.”
This is a very interesting article! Thanks for sharing how the operation went. I am looking forward to seeing more advancements to the oral health world in the future.
Amazing! It’ll be great to see how technology helps innovate the dental industry. The dental profession might change in the near future to include a lot more using robots. Thanks for sharing!
Dental is not an industry. Dentist treatment patients not just by skill, but also by knowledge, wisdom, empathy, humanity and by heart. They treat patient with holistic approach. Not just able to remove a problematic tooth. I strongly opposed this. This is against bioethics.
Im a dentist and im not afraid of biomechanical evolution. Give me a their object oriented language, classes and sub root programming, i will still be there looking out for the patient. Only Im a tech dentist instead with full control of the robot should shyt go wrong. Either way we do this for our patients not for selfish reasons but making a living. It is upto you how you choose to do the treatment
Yes, exactly my thoughts as well. Giving full control to the Robot is sheer foolishness. It will be better if the Robot is under the control of the Dentist or being controlled by one and the option to be able to stop or change the treatment plan immediately during the procedure is a must as we are working on a human and there are multiple things which can go wrong. It is true that this method removes human error but working on a human is not same as working on a machine.
Imagine how much a general dentist can increase his/ her revenue by not referring out third molars…Much like LANAP did for perio.