I’m unfamiliar with this topic, what do you mean? I thought spinal fusion was just a medical procedure to connect a couple vertebrae for some reason, but I thought the downside was a little less flexibility. I wasn’t tracking it being especially barbaric.
I used to work with a few orthopedic surgeons over a couple years and discovered a lot of the tools used during surgery for bones or hard materials in the body really aren't all that different than what you'd find at a hardware store.
Usually tools are a bit more precise, materials are a bit more stringently regulated, and everything is typically well sterilized but when it comes to the physical mechanics, they're about the same. Drills, saws, hammers, all that good stuff.
The main difference is you're usually not watching it for a variety of reasons unlike many dental procedures. And the tools are in the hands of a literal surgeon.
Yeah it took me decades to learn that the pain of getting a cavity filled isn't normal. I thought the freezing helped and that the ice pick jab causing lightning of pain down my spine was what everyone suffered.
A dentist finally slowed down. Noticed my tears. Asked. Had a conversation. Tried freezing me in other places. Worked perfectly. She guessed that my nerves are anatomically weird.
I had the same for years, and eventually just said "get on with it" without any pain killers and basically just try to withstand the pain as much as possible.
Eventually one dentist suggested trying the injection 15-20 mins before the filling started. I'd go in, get a jab, then go back out and wait while they saw another patient.
Now there is no pain at all. I could literally fall asleep in the chair. What a difference.
I was very surprised when I went to a dentist in Europe to fill a cavity: they don’t freeze anything by default unless you really want. I thought I’d try without anesthesia and it turned out surprisingly bearable. Plus I didn’t have half my face frozen for half a day.
As a european who got dental care in two countries: I never heard of freezing at the dentist! What do they freeze exactly? How does it relate to anestesia?
Medical care seems to have a lot of weird country-specific traditions, e.g. in Hungary it's apparently common to fill small kids' healthy teeth if the groves are too deep so they're simpler to clean and they don't get cavities.
I had never heard of such a thing before moving here, and I genuinely can't tell if it's a brilliant innovation or an insane post-soviet tradition that needs to go away.
Freezing is a local anaesthetic. It is a needle injection. Think lidocaine, that kind of thing. Better to go to an oral surgeon for more complicated work.
Filling in grooves needs to go away. It will change the bite/shift the jaw which theoretically can lead to other problems. Not to mention, the grooves are there to help provide a grinding surface for vegetable matter, etc. If you make your teeth perfectly flat, they won't be as effective. Making your teeth flatter is actually reducing/damaging the effectiveness of your teeth. If it was a good idea herbivores would have teeth as flat as a tabletop.
Where I live, as a kid my dentist filed the tips of my canines down a little. Why? Who knows, they weren't bothering me before. It was something that was decided upon without consulting me.
They inject something in the gums that removes sensitivity there so you feel nothing, and then have half your face frozen for 4h afterwards because it acts on the nearby nerves that control your facial muscles.
Having experienced both (frozen and not frozen), I can't tell what's better. The feeling when they're digging in the tooth without freezing isn't great but it's not painful either; the feeling when they put a needle in your gum to inject the product isn't great either but then you don't feel the procedure. I'd say it's different but equivalent in terms of discomfort.
> They inject something in the gums that removes sensitivity there so you feel nothing
I've never heard this called "freezing". I assume you're being injected with lidocaine, the dentist's non-psychoactive best friend. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lidocaine
I've had two root canals done with local anesthetic and no real problems. I was real nervous for the first one and went to a specialist and they used a lot of local anesthetic that I couldn't feel anything but a little pressure.
But the second time I just had my doctor do it with his anesthetic, and it wasn't much worse than a filling for me. A little unpleasant but not unbearable.
On the negative side, either that or some other dental work I had done close to the same time must have damaged a nerve and now I haven't been able to really taste anything in the front half of my tongue the past three years (still can on the back of my tongue, at least, thankfully).
You don't ask for drugs? Ask for drugs. I always get Xanax and it basically puts me out through the whole thing. I have, err... had a lot of root canals.
I'd think the bigger concern with a root canal is the not-insignificant likelihood they will break your jaw.
Or not get the whole root out, causing an infection and need to get the procedure done again. (Never have a dentist do your root canal, folks)
I generally don’t need pain meds for dental stuff. But if I thought for a moment that I’d be feeling any pain at all, yes, give me all the meds. I’m not proud: given a choice between pain and no pain, I’ll take the second option any day of the week. I know that some people have specific reasons for avoiding meds, but absent that, why put yourself through it? You don’t get bonus points for suffering.
Even now, sometimes it does hurt, plenty. Local anesthesia can be somehow negated by bacterial infection, something involving the pH getting altered. My endo apologized but had to keep drilling to reach relief.
I had to suffer through one as well. They have me the max number of shots after being on antibiotics and the pain was still unbelievable. Worst part… the dentist messed up and the whole root canal was for nothing.
This was 5 years ago. We're all different. Some people respond poorly to root canals, some feel moderate pain, some feel absolutely no pain.
And to be clear, the pain has been after my root canal, not during (even though ostensibly, the nerve is gone). My worst root canal was infected, but the endodontist claims that it usually doesn't cause that much pain (perhaps, but not for some people).
My mother and uncle have had the same issues. My father has never had issues.
I have a friend who needed a major extraction at the panicky start of COVID, in Australia. The dentists weren't allowed to use drills. I'm not sure why but something to do with aerosolizing.
It turns out the things dentists use when they're not allowed to use drills are chisels.
Most extractions are done without drilling. That's really only necessary when the tooth needs to be sectioned, or if there is a bony impaction. Usually a bit of movement with forceps or elevators is all that's required.
But yeah, sectioning a tooth with chisels sounds pretty bad. I think I would try to avoid that situation. I'm not sure why a dentist would even have an instrument that could be described as a "chisel".
