Oregon Patent of the Month – December 2021
Wisdom teeth extraction is no joke. We might get some funny videos from the after effects of anaesthesia, but the cost of the procedure and the potential for complications is surprisingly high. Each year, more than 11,000 people suffer a permanent paraesthesia – numbness of the lip, tongue, and cheek – as a consequence of nerve injury during the procedure.
TriAgenics, Inc. has focused on developing an alternative procedure that will address wisdom teeth when they are just a bud. Their solution is a one-minute procedure designed to gently warm the center of the developing wisdom tooth buds, ultimately preventing them from ever forming. To accompany this procedure, they have developed a series of ablation probe tips and stents to be used for this tooth agenesis procedure.
The ablation probe tip has a shaft which is inserted into the tooth bud. This provides safe access to the tooth bud without risk of necrosis to the surrounding gum tissue. The bud is then exposed to microwave or radio frequency ablation. This could be performed in a standard dental practitioner’s office, reducing cost, recovery time, and potential complications.
The company has performed extensive research and testing on animals, with no observed adverse outcomes other than one post-op infection. The procedure could be performed on a child between 6-12 years old, when the teeth have not yet started to grow. This would completely eliminate the traditional invasive wisdom tooth surgery, replacing it with a simple non-invasive ablation process. The company anticipates FDA approval for their Zero3 TBA system by 2025
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