Dental surgeons turn to the robot for help in placing implants

LAGRANGE, Ga. – When David Arnold ended up at Refresh Me Dental Center in LaGrange with a painful cracked tooth that had turned into an abscess, the 64-year-old owner of the video production company was alarmed to hear he would have to have the entire tooth removed. and enough. some bone has been removed.

“When I lost that permanent tooth, it was devastating,” says Arnold.

But after he recovered, Arnold returned to see dental surgeon Dr. Chuck Pitts for implant surgery.

At that moment he saw the dental robot Yomi.

“And, I thought, wow, this is what the future of dentistry looks like,” Arnold says.

Robots are a routine part of many surgeries in the US, but Yomi is the first and only robotic system used for dental surgery.

Dr. Pitts estimates that he has used the combination of the Yomi system’s software and its 3D X-ray technology to place implants in at least 100 patients since he received the system in January.

Pitts says the robot-guided technology has been especially helpful for surgeries involving patients who have lost a lot of bone, which can make it more difficult to anchor the implants.

“Because I can get to exactly where I want to put it, I can take advantage of bone that otherwise might not have been a safe place to go if I was free,” says Pitts. “So it gives me a lot more versatility and a lot more precision.”

He says Yomi also speeds things up.

“Once we’ve sedated the patient and administered local anesthesia, I can place four to six implants in 30 to 40 minutes, and it used to take me three to four hours,” says Pitts.

He can also improvise and make changes, Pitts says, if something unexpected happens during surgery.

“If I go into my mouth and something looks unusual anatomically, I can say to one of my assistants, ‘Let’s move that implant two millimeters this way, or 1.5 millimeters that way,'” he says. Pitts. “She can click, click, click and the plan changes instantly.”

David Arnold says his implant surgery was painless and he had no bleeding.

“That was probably the best experience I’ve had. No, it was the best experience I’ve had in a dental chair,” he says.