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DR. MYRON HENRICKSON: Laser root canals are where we go into the inside of the tooth, the canals, and we place a little fiber down into the canal that is—that fires laser power. And in our case, it fires it radially, which means at a 90 degree angle to that tip.

Because it’s at a 90 degree angle, it fires in a circle. And as we pull that tip out of the root, that root is totally 100% sterilized. And that’s how root canals succeed. Are you able to sterilize the inside of that root and then fill it so that it will not leak?

We have a Biolase water laser. It’s a laser that can cut hard tissue and soft tissue. And it can totally decontaminate anything. I’m not sure the exact number, but I don't know there’s more than, well, say 100 dentists in Minnesota out of 2,800 that have this laser, so not very many people have it.

DR. HENRICKSON: Can you feel that at all?

CHRIS: No, no.

DR. MYRON HENRICKSON: My patients have virtually no pain. I mean they have no pain while I do it. I mean I can guarantee them they won’t have pain while I do it, okay? Now afterwards, an average root canal is painful for 48 hours afterwards; 10% are not painful at all. Well the first 30 root canals that I did with my water laser, 29 of those people had no pain whatsoever afterwards. So you know it’s a matter of really killing the bacteria that allows the tissue to come back to health quickly.

One other thing the water laser can do is it can—we can do fillings with it. And if you fire the laser at the—at a tooth, it will numb the tooth up without any pain at all to the patient. Then we can actually go in and drill the tooth without giving the patient any Novocaine whatsoever.

We use this a lot on kids 'cause they're so afraid of a needle at all. Even though our needle is painless, they're just afraid of the fact that we're using it. So a lot of kids, we will use this technique on them. And we do it on adults too, especially on front teeth.