<title>Novel oral laser applications</title>

Abstract

In dental hard tissue ablation, ultra-short laser pulses have proven sufficiently their potential for material ablation with negligible collateral damage providing many advantages. The absence of micro-cracks and the possibility to avoid overheating of the pulp during dental cavity preparation may be among the most important issues, the latter opening up an avenue for potential painless treatment. Beside the evident short interaction time of laser radiation with the irradiated tissue, scanning of the ultra-short pulse trains turned out to be crucial for ablating cavities of required quality and shape. Additionally, long-pulsed laser systems have demonstrated successfully their suitability for decontamination purposes. In this paper, an overview of different indications for laser application in dental therapies in both pulse regimes is presented. A special focus is set on the decontamination of dental implants in periimplantitis therapy. Having employed commercially available long pulse systems for dental applications and ultra-short 330 fs pulses, we present first results for temperature development and corresponding ablation thresholds for dental implants, as in the future more gentle implant cleaning by ultra-short laser pulses could become of interest.