3 Things You Should Know about Dental X-Rays
Sometimes we talk about the good old days, but in dentistry the best care is happening right now. Dental X-Rays, for example, have undergone some marvelous technical advances over the past few years. Advances which definitely benefit you, the patient!
About once a year your dentist will take x-rays of your teeth. X-rays provide extremely important information about the health of your teeth. This information makes it possible to provide proactive and preventative dentistry and can address a lot of dental issues before they become much worse. Dr. Taylor of Martin-Taylor Dentistry has said that some of the worst cases he has ever seen are those folks who have not had dental care in many years. In many of those cases, problems that could have been addressed easily had they been viewed on an x-ray early on, have developed into something much more serious.
Here are some other things you should know about dental x-rays:
1. There are two types of dental x-rays; film and digital. Just as in the general public, dentistry is moving from film to digital imagery. Many dentists have moved to digital x-rays completely and some dental practices are still using both techniques as they transition from one to the other. For the sake of improved patient care, Dr. Martin and Dr. Taylor are making the transition from traditional film to modern digital x-rays
2. Some of the benefits of Digital Dental X-Rays are that the images are larger and can be seen immediately on a computer screen. There the images can be manipulated with contrast, zoom and value which provide much clearer images of the tooth. Because of this, the dentist is able to show the patient right then and there what is happening with their teeth. This immediacy and clarity have made digital x-rays a powerful educational tool for the patient.
3. All types of dental x-rays are safe and expose the patient to very small amounts of radiation. In fact, it would take thousands of traditional film x-rays to equal the amount of radiation in one MRI. And digital x-rays use even less radiation than that. According to the ADA in fact, the amount of radiation from dentistry accounts for only .2% of all exposure from all sources. The miniscule amount of radiation exposure from a set of dental x-rays is less than a day in the sun!