Nanodiamonds Show Promise for Aiding Recovery from Root Canal Therapy

 

 

 

For years now, in fact for well over 100 years here in the US, the go to material to fill root canals has been a rubberized form of a tree sap found in the Amazon jungle called Gutta Percha.  The material was melted, had radiopacifiers added (to make it visible on an x-ray) and was then rolled into long thin cone shaped fibers.  These fibers are then placed into the cleaned root canal space.

 

One of the problems of GP is that it is SO flexible.  Sometimes the little fibers are difficult to place as they want to bend before going exactly where you want them.

 

Now comes word that placement may become much easier and GP may become stronger due to the inclusion of nanodiamonds.  This is a pretty intriguing discovery from UCLA where it was developed by their dental school and their engineering school.

 

The press release regarding this discovery can be read right here.

 

This could turn out to be a nice improvement for dentistry.  However, everything *always* looks good on the lab bench, but sometimes once it gets to clinical use… not so much.  Over the years, dentistry has seen more than a few discoveries that promised to replace GP, but after a period of time, always returned to the tried and true standard.

 

I'm very excited about the possibility of GP that has more stiffness and would therefore be easier to handle & place.  My biggest concern at the moment is that the clinical trial of this new material only includes 3 patients.  While the results are promising, I'm waiting for further results.  Give the paper a read and I think you will be guardedly optimistic too.

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