Hi. This is Dr. Antolak from the thegentledentist.com in Shelby Township, Michigan. (586) 247-3500 is our phone number. And why am I sitting here with this dental hand piece, or what’s known as the drill, is because this is the thing that can frighten so many people out of coming to the dentist. And so you have, you have fear of the drill don’t worry about it, we actually have a number of things that we do to try to combat that feeling of the drill. A dental hand piece is necessary so that we can remove old fillings out of teeth and decay and reshape teeth.

And so, this is really important part of what we do, but if we can present it a little differently to our patients then that really makes it a little bit more comfortable for people. The reason why I think so many people are afraid of the memory that they have is of the high whining pitch of an air driven hand piece. An air driven hand piece is the one that goes like this. When you’re working on it and it just goes up and down, up and down. And you have this whining noise and really loud and one thing that we do here is I do, have not used one of those in quite a long time. What we have in place of that is called, electric hand piece. Most of the time, an air driven hand piece has a turbine engine like it does on a jet and so it spins very fast. This for example is our, our electric hand piece and this actually an electric motor right here inside of this right here that gives us a lot of torque. And the reason why that’s important is, you’re not going to get that high pitch high and then low, and then high and then low. You’re going to get a straight, steady sound, but it’s a less sound too. So if I put this on you hear it and its just one noise. And it’s about half the volume and half the decibels that it would be with an air-driven hand piece.

So this is one thing we do; we can also dial in. When we use this, we can dial in the exact speed that we want. We have so much control out of what a, what a dental hand piece can do. And so they’re really outstanding for doing most everything that we do. Also, if the sound is an issue we do have is our noise cancelling headphones if you want to listen to music. You can use our noise cancelling headphones. You put these on and we can get into if you want music we can get into Pandora. You can choose the type of music that you want to listen to. Which makes it very nice and convenient. If you’re having a longer procedure and you want something a little different, we use these same, we use the same headphones, but we also incorporate something that’s very unique, and that is these are. These are glasses. These are video glasses. Inside these video glasses, you put these on and there’s a screen that sits right there. And it makes it look like you’re in a movie theater.  We plus this in and we can plug in Netflix and so with Netflix with the headphones it’s like being at a movie theater while you’re having your dentistry done. So the sound isn’t quite as, as dramatic and you know, we can all also communicate with our patients even though they’re watching a movie. You can still see through these down when you are wearing them. We can also just take off the headphones and talk to them. But yeah, when this is on I can see right here like this. But I can also see when when I look right at the movie. And so it has the benefit of, of having both comfort and distraction but yet at the same time we can indicate with our patients. These are just a few things that we do in our office to try to eliminate the sounds of the dental hand piece to reduce that sound. And also just to make your visit as comfortable as possible. Please come and check us out at thegentledentist.com. Should you want to call us, you can, 586-247-3500. Thank you and have a blessed day.

Shelby Township Dentist Discusses Fear of the Drill