Lab Grown Teeth, dental science
For those interested in dentistry and dental science, I found this article very interesting! While a fully functional replacement to human teeth still hasn’t been developed, early models and tooth-like structures are amazingly seeing promising success. It’s only about a 7 min read so it’s definitely something you should check out!
https://www.cnn.com/science/lab-grown-human-teeth-spc
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Thank you for the article Gavin. It would be life-changing for so many patients young and old if you can replace a missing tooth with your own biologically compatible tooth. I see many cases at my clinic where kids in elementary school ages extract their permanent first molars due to gross cavity (unrestorable), pain and/or infection. To answer the question below, even if this treatment option was available to the patients today, there are many facotrs patients consider before deciding on the final treatment plan. In my practice, one of the biggest deciding factor would be the out of pocket costs or whether their insurance would cover it. There are many patients that would rather extract their permanent tooth versus saving thier tooth if they have to pay out of pocket. Unfortunately this is the reality. Implants costs in the thousands now. I cannot imagine how much the lab grown tooth would be. I'm certain people would everything in their power to save their vital organs such as heart or brain. People have 32 teeth including wisdom teeth. Missing couple of molars are not life-alerting condition for many people. IF they can somehow make it affordable or same range as an implant, it would be a differenty story. Let's hope...