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Comment by drewchew | Hacker News Reader

Will robot dentists facilitate the option to lay face down for procedures so that the debris and saliva falls out instead of needing the suction tool?

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This, and the fact that a sterilized robot is way less likely to transmit airborne pathogens than a dentist and an assistant wearing a surgical mask at best. Maybe not v.1.0b4, but I'd sign up for v.1.2.

Less likely to touch the mouse while looking at xrays. Can't imagine how many Germs are transfered between patients that way.

Every dentist I go to use single-use thin nitril or similar gloves. If they have to use any of the non-sterilisable equipment (like the mouse or kb), they take said glove off before use and put on a new one after.

I mean that’s just common sense, surely.

Common sense would mean that my local butchers and fishmongers would not handover money and manipulate raw meat/fish with the same nitrile gloves and either employ an assistant or use a dedicated machine for that but they do not.

They do here but Norway has a functional balance of regulations and fines for this kind of stuff. Sometimes it’s too strict though but I certainly appreciate it.

Maybe I'm out of the loop, but is this a known issue? As in, are dental offices a higher risk location for diseases to spread?

Well your mucosa is more exposed than it normally is. Your mouth is acting like a receptacle, particularly when you're not wearing a dental dam. The probability that a larger pathogen-containing droplet will randomly fall in is much higher.

Larger droplets normally fall straight to the ground. Smaller droplets can be sucked in by breathing in no matter what, so the probability for those is equivalent to just being near someone. However, depending on the pathogen, risk can scale much more than linearly with droplet size. Overall risk is probably in the ballpark of an unmasked in-your-face shouting match with someone.

Then as someone else mentioned, any fomites can transfer from anything non-sterile that the dentist or assistant touches. There can also be aerosol-generating procedures in other rooms, though the robot wouldn't help there (they'd need a negative air pressure system.)

This discusses some of the risks, but mostly from the standpoint of protecting the providers from the patients: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK589669/

I think OP was wondering whether any studies have been done to demonstrate a correlation between dental operations and infections. It does seem needless to worry about it until you have some idea of effect size.

Those are likely to be pathogen-specific. The paper I linked for instance has a reference that dentists have a 10x risk of chronic Hep B than the rest of the population, but that doesn't translate to Hep C.

And some patients visiting dental offices may have compromised immune systems

I think there will be even more sophisticated safety features and infection control protocols

The technology exists to kill anything airborne immediately with UVC light, this will be deployed long before robot dentists.

Long ago (decades) the dentist would do a bunch of work, then pause to let me swish water in my mouth from the auto-filling cup, and spit into the water-circulating spitoon-thing before continuing.

EDIT: hmm... a "dental engine"?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_engine

better results searching for "dental spit sink"

It’s called a cuspidor. :-)

On first blush, this is an interesting premise. And it would seem to make sense once there is no need for human attendants, nor any potential accommodation for them.

I imagine, particularly with V1, there's probably going to be human attendants for a good portion of the procedure. You'd want them for administering the numbing agent and positioning the machine for the procedure.

> And it would seem to make sense once there is no need for human attendants, nor any potential accommodation for them.

Perhaps it could be combined with a back massage. Those chairs that you stick your face in would be tailor-made for this!

That's exactly what I was thinking, you can lay face down on a massage bed for a pretty long time, so they should just be able to put the robot in your mouth through the face hole lol

What if I like the taste of burning tooth enamel? Can I flip over still?

I can taste this comment, and I really don't like it.

You'll have to ask when the time comes and report back.

taste it?

I felt tooth pain thinking of it lol

The scent would be wafting directly into your nostrils if you were facedown, so... you got that going for you I guess?

They can probably sell you a fragrance like that, and you can just apply it whenever you feel like.

Wow that would be a game changer.

The suction tool is used to dry the area out and make it easier to see and work. A robot could be taught to see through water, but it still needs a dry environment for some work.

Yes, but working with gravity instead of against might still be useful.

And the opposite for others. For example, getting cavities filled in the front of the mouth probably benefits from laying face up so that any saliva that's generated flows back down the throat instead of to the front of the mouth.

I'm guessing a lot of existing techniques and tools have an implicit bias for the patient being face up.

> I'm guessing a lot of existing techniques and tools have an implicit bias for the patient being face up.

Well, they have a bias for a human doing the dentistry. With all that entails.

I would pay enormous sums to avoid the suction tool. What a sensory nightmare.

I like it

Me too! I wish I had one for home

Do you find dental chairs anxiety-inducing? For me - I do!

I'm sorry, but the thought of laying face down while allowing my drool to drip off my lips, moustache and beard onto machinery below sounds absolutely revolting.

Probably not since you'd be drooling all over the robot "hand" and arm making it more difficult to keep clean.

But it could probably moisten your drying out lips so they don't crack

All reusable dental tools have to go through a sterilization procedure after every use so would it matter? And they could have one-time use sleeves to put on the arms.

I think the main concern would be debris and drool getting on the camera but that is probably a concern for any position.

And you can just put some glass over the camera, and have a little wiper or 'lotus effect' coating.

Traction beams for example.

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