Dental Drills — How Loud Are They? — I'm Petrified

[su bernadette]

HI all,

I need a filling which means removing an amalgam filling and replacing with and a new filling.

I'm petrified of the drill noise. He will use two drills one of which is a high speed drill and the other is the ordinary drill.

Can anyone give me any advice as I have noisy and intrusive tinnitus and hyperacusis.

What is the decibel level of the drills.

Susanne.

 

[Bill Bauer]

Please search this site (keywords "dentist" "dental" "filling", etc.). There are many posts on this topic. The bad news is that some people got tinnitus (or got a spike) after a dental procedure. It is certainly very loud and earplugs might make it worse due to "occlusion effect" - sound waves traveling through your body and bouncing back into the ear off of the ear plug. It is impossible to protect yourself from this noise. If your filling is on a lower jaw, it is a little better.

The good news is that there are things that you can do. My dentist used a dental laser. Those lasers are great - if you wear Peltor muffs or ear plugs, you ought to be ok. However, some work has to be done to shape your new filling with a regular drill. You can ensure that the drill being used for that purpose is the new "electric powered" drill, as opposed to the usual "air powered" drill - the former are said to be much quieter than the latter. Moreover, you can also ask your dentist to run that electric powered drill at the lowest possible speed. Another thing you can do is ask your dentist to drill for 5 seconds and make a 10 second pauses. This basically triples the time of the drilling. I paid my dentist $300 for the extra time due to all of those adjustments. He was still difficult. In any case, find a good dentist who is not an asshole, who owns a dental laser and electric-powered drills, discuss your concerns, and don't do anything unless the dentist agrees to drill for 5 seconds and make 10 second pauses.

By the way, another thing you will want to do is make sure your neck is relaxed and straight when they drill your tooth. You may want to bring a towel to place under your neck. At least one person here believes that he got his tinnitus aggravated as a result of not paying attention to his neck during a dental visit.

My dentist told me that his laser wouldn't work on amalgam fillings. However, it appears that lasers that could be used for this purpose do exist:
http://www.dentaleconomics.com/arti...s-ii-amalgam-removal-with-a-dental-laser.html

 

[su bernadette]

Thank you Bill.....good advice
Susanne

 

[Fauzy]

Try 'auritech work plugs'. They say it does not have the occlusion effect. If you google this you can find out about this earplug. I only had the music ones at home when I went to the dentist but I am sure they helped to some degree. When I asked for advice they said the work ones would be the best protection. They are £20 approx. so very reasonable. I have now ordered the work ones in case of any future dental work. Hope this helps. I too was terrified.

 

[su bernadette]

Thanks Fauzy, i will check them out.

Susanne

 

[canyonero]

Had to have a filling today. That was a god awful loud and high pitched scraping noise. No T spike afterwards luckily.

 

[JimChicago]

I recently had a metal filling removed, the hole enlarged and a composite filling installed.

The dentist did it 5 seconds on and 10 seconds off. This was much shorter (may be a couple minutes with longer pauses to check progress) and a much quieter drill than the other dentist who drilled for30 minutes to install the crown that gave me noise induced T.

Impacted on T?
My T spiked and came dowm to its usual roar after 48 hours.

Separately, the dentist told me that composite filings can be removed with a quieter air/sand blast type of tool in lieu of a drill.

 

[CMIH]

I just had the worst dental experience of my life. I need to have a crown on a tooth. I went today to have temporary crown put on. The dentist started drilling and the noise was SO LOUD it was painful. I made him stop several times because I just couldn't take it, and I KNEW it was going to damage my hearing even further. I already have bad tinnitus and I KNEW even as he was drilling it was going to damage my hearing and make the tinnitus worse. I could kick myself now for not just saying, "Stop! I'm not doing this!" I should have just stopped the whole procedure right away. This is going to be one of the live moments/decisions I will always regret. I've had crowns put on my teeth before, although by a different dentist, and it wasn't that loud. I'm guessing this dentist used a different type of drill bit/burr or something. I don't know what was different but this was excruciatingly loud. I feel like an idiot for not stopping the procedure. A tooth can be replaced. My hearing can't.