Low Pain Vector Treatments For Periodontal Disease

Pain is no laughing matter; and dentistry has form when it comes to producing a smorgasbord of pain via its varied procedures. Things are getting better when it comes to pain management during dental care. However, some treatments are harder than others to achieve a pain free threshold and remain effective. Within low pain vector treatments for periodontal disease is the promise of slow care vs fast turnarounds. Gum disease is probably the most serious oral health issue facing humanity in the 21C. The levels of periodontal disease worldwide are staggering.

“Severe periodontal diseases are estimated to affect around 19% of the global adult population, representing more than 1 billion cases worldwide.”
– WHO International 

Coming To Grips With Gum Disease & Gently Going About It

The Vector Method has been around since 1999. It utilises ultrasound in its gentler approach to treating periodontal disease. This is a low-pain therapy, which targets the root cause of gum disease. Traditional procedures like scaling and root planing do not serve pain sensitive patients particularly well. Whether via manual curettage or machine instruments this process is conventionally a tough ask for patients with pain sensitivity issues. The Vector Method promises better results on this basis.

“To start with, it was Prof. Nolden from the University of Bonn who drew my attention to it. That was around 2000, just after market launch. Prof. Nolden told me in particular about how the Vector can be used for low-pain periodontal treatment. Because I had written my thesis on the objectification of sensory perceptions, I was very aware of the topic and quickly became fascinated with this new technique.”
– Dental News 

The Vector Method & Slow Care Dentistry

There is always, in any industry, a progressive evolution toward greater efficiencies. Most usually, faster is thought to be better. This remains true in health care, where healing the patient is the ultimate goal. In dentistry, however, fear of the dentist has been well recognised as a major reason why a large part of the market avoids dental care wherever possible. Pain at the hands of the dentist is a boogie man for both adults and children via dental procedure anxiety. This, then, allows the tortoise back in the race, when it comes to such things as the Vector Method and slow care dentistry. Therefore, dentists with greater empathetic qualities, although in the minority, it must be said, are more likely to try something like the Vector Method for the treatment of periodontal disease.

“Vector is an ultrasound machine used in dentistry for removing dental plaque, polishing the tooth root in the process of complex treatment of periodontal diseases.”
– Eurodent

Periodontal Disease & Pain Reduction Procedure Techniques

“When left untreated, periodontal disease can cause tooth loss (partial to complete edentulism) and is closely associated with other diseases including diabetes and cardiovascular disease, with which it shares common risk factors, e.g. unhealthy diet and tobacco use.”
– FDI World Dental

How we approach pain, as the instigator of it, is, I suppose, revealing about our attitudes toward it. Things like, does the end justify the means? Is it better to strike directly, cleanly, and get in and out post haste? Dentists must muse on such things and develop treatment policies on the basis of their philosophical findings.

“Pain is among the knottiest problems in the long, tangled history of relations between body and mind; moreover, the Marquis de Sade so thoroughly offends or resists the mentality of Anglo-American literary criticism that his works—when acknowledged at all—meet with a silence deeper and more ominous than censorship.”
– UC Press E-books

For a long time, dentists were in the pain business and their medieval tools were akin to instruments of torture. This lengthy period of tooth pulling with pliers and no anaesthetic means that modern dental care has a lot of convincing to do for much of the population to reverse generations of local wisdom on the topic. Pain management has, however, made major advancements, as many patients would now attest to from their own experiences. Some procedures, a rare few, do still present sticky problems in getting the balance right between effectiveness and pain management.

“I started out pretty much as a pilot user, so I embarked on using the new system without any real prior knowledge. I quickly realised that I could use it very effectively, and that the process of using the instrument in the periodontal pockets involved noticeably less pain for the patient than with the other alternatives that were available. However, some of my practising colleagues were irritated because they had hoped for a faster procedure. This is why I also felt it was my duty to promote correct understanding of the Vector Method among dental practitioners – that it was primarily not about speed, but about a low-pain and gentle alternative to conventional therapies.”
– Prof. Dr. Andreas Braun and Dr. Johannes- Simon Wenzler from the Clinic of Restorative Dentistry, Periodontology and Preventive Dentistry at RWTH Aachen University.

How The Vector Method Slow Care Works In Practice

Supragingival cleaning work is achieved via a Scaler handpiece and instruments utilised in the Vector Method ultrasound treatment. Removal of biofilm at the subgingival level through the Vector Paro and Vector Fluid polish suspension is done gently but effectively. Slow care has its place in the oral care arsenal, it seems, and not all dentistry is performed under the gun, as if it is a race determined by economic forces over all other concerns.

“The Vector method is currently a cost- effective, low-pain method for periodontal therapy. It is not particularly fast, but it is very gentle on the surfaces of the tooth. Particularly in the root areas, I can use this method for selective removal of concrement without excessive abrasion of hard tooth substance and without leaving unwanted traces of my work.”
– Prof. Andreas Braun

The Arguments Against The Vector Method

The dental care model in Australia is primarily one of small businesses operating as independent health care providers. Solo dentists and group practices dominate the industry.

“The exact figures are uncertain, but corporate entities own and operate about 12 per cent of the approximately 7000 dental practices in Australia, up from about six per cent a decade ago. “
– Bite Magazine

Profitability is, often, determined on the basis of the number of patients seen and the average amount spent by each patient over daily, weekly, monthly and annual ratios. Investment in the plant via materials and instruments is substantial. ROIs must be high to justify investment and allocations of time and highly skilled labour. Primarily, the arguments against such approaches as the Vector Method are based on the extra time demanded by slow care dental care to the bottom line of a practice. In addition, some dentists raise the matter of how much time busy patients are willing to devote to procedures carried out over longer time frames.

It is all about the level of investment willing to be applied by both dental clinic and patient to achieve outcomes. If pain sensitivity is a major issue for the patient and they are made aware of alternative periodontal disease treatments like the Vector Method, then they have the opportunity to make an informed choice on this basis.

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