What Is The Most Significant Advancement In Oral Surgery In The Last 10 Years?

As an oral surgeon, I want to share with you a question I often get asked, “What do you think is the most significant advancement in oral surgery in the last 10 years?” Well, I’ll tell you that probably the most significant diagnostic advancement in oral surgery has been the routine use of something called CT scans. CT scans are basically three-dimensional pictures of what’s going on. It allows us to hold your head in our hands and spin it around, look at it from all different dimensions – the front, side, top and from the back. Dental x-rays are really two-dimensional pictures of a three-dimensional space, so we had to make a lot of assumptions about how thick something is or where it’s located. By having a CT scan, we can now know exactly how far a cist goes, we can know exactly how far a mass is, we can know exactly where a bone has been compromised or the size and shape of a ridge in an area. It allows us to plan out ahead of time, exactly what our options are so we’re not having to make decisions at the time of surgery, and at that moment that hasn’t been thought through fully and completely. So for me, there are a lot of other things that have advanced in oral surgery, a lot of incredible things we are doing now from stems cells to biological material and bone grafting but none of that would be possible if we didn’t have CT scans to help us prepare better for that moment when we know to use each one of those other things.