THE DIAMOND-COATED SONIC SCALER TIP .2. LOSS OF SUBSTANCE AND ALTERATION OF ROOT SURFACE TEXTURE AFTER DIFFERENT SCALING MODALITIES

The authors have developed a set of four modified sonic scaler inserts with various shaped shafts and diamond-coated budded inserts. The ins erts are specially designed for the furcation area since instruments u sed hitherto have not been successful in completely preventing slow co ntinuous periodontal breakdown in multirooted teeth. to improve unders tanding of their clinical effectiveness, instrumentation of dentin sam ples was done with a curette as well as conventional and modified soni c scaler inserts under standardized conditions. the result showed that significantly greater amounts of tooth substance were removed with th e diamond-coated airscaler tips than with the conventional tip. The de pth of substance removal was comparable to that obtained with hand ins truments and increased with application force. Although differences in surface texture were found among the different modes of scaling, it r emains to be determined whether they are of clinical significance.